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Nixiesearch 4

[ "Linda Wilson" ]

[ "He who does not work", "plays", "The Girl Who Played with Fire", "play", "Play On", "weaker neighbors", "The Spy Who Loved Me", "DOE test", "Who Made Who", "A Doe subpoena", "it does not follow", "Gianfrancesco Penni", "Granth Be Thy Guru", "Doe B", "Playing with Fire", "Play age", "Play No Games", "Playing in the Shadows", "the playing card", "playing technique", "Press Play", "Power Play", "play song", "The One Who Really Loves You", "The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing", "The Band Played On", "Google Play", "Price to Play", "squeeze play", "Play Dead", "offensive plays", "slowing the play" ]

[ ">but with out the BS\n\nOh buddy do I have some terrible news for you" ]

[ "You know that if someone is into you they are into you because of who you are and not because of what you look like.", "Figure out why you're upset. You deserve better than that, so think about what it is that has you hung up on someone who would do that. Think about WHY you deserve better. Think about how incompatible the cheater actually is with what is right for you. Do you have them on a pedestal? Reconcile who they have shown themselves to be against who you'd hoped they were. Think about ways to find someone who actually IS what you'd hoped for.", "You don't know how much garbage there already is. Masks are nothing", "Simping by default is cringe enough. Simping someone who you know is in a relationship is about the most pathetic thing you can do.", "Don’t care for someone who doesn’t care about you", "I don’t know how someone who could get offended by nudity but there’s a time and a place for it.", "What kinda shitty husband would fuck someone who isn't their wife.", "You never know how much you like someone until you watch them liking someone else.", "A jerk is just someone who's mean. A narcissist is someone who thinks the world is all about them.\n\nA jerk wouldn't help you out because they just don't care, can't be assed, etc.\n\nA narcissist wouldn't help you out because there's nothing in it for them, and it's got nothing to do with their needs.", "Depends on how you feel about the person who desires you.", "Your response sounds pretty dogmatic.\n\n\nThe \"free market\" would distribute care by how much wealth one has, not by those who need it. Is that what you want? The producers would focus on what the wealthy want, ignore everyone else. The wealthy would get treated first. You OK with that?\n\n\nHow does the government ruin anything? Do you know?", "What's scarier than being who you really are is FAKing to be someone else who is not really the real you .", "We must be the only two people on Reddit who know about those phones, many years before Apple." ]

[ "Has a better, creamier flavor than the Safeway Lucerne and Albertsons store brands.<br /><br />The Saco doesn't dissolve quite as quickly as those two, but it does fully dissolve if you wait a few minutes or make it ahead of time and let it sit in the fridge overnight as the instructions suggest. One reviewer said it wouldn't dissolve \"even in boiling water\", but boiling water cooks the proteins and makes them lumpy, same as if you boil regular milk, and once that's happened, it'll never dissolve.<br /><br />With Super Saver free shipping, the Amazon price is currently only a little less than Safeway, but the milk is slighly better, and I can get a larger quantity from Amazon than the few little boxes the local Safeway keeps stocked on its powdered milk shelf at any one time.<br /><br />The box in which Amazon shipped my 2-box order would, I think, have held exactly 3 of the Saco boxes." ]

[ "I was looking for white chocolate chips and found these. They can't actually be called chocolate since there is no cocoa butter or powder in them but they taste amazing and melt well in the microwave. Just don't microwave them too long, watch carefully. I used these baking chips this holiday season and was pleased with the results. I melted some of the chips and spread them on top of a vanilla cheesecake. Everyone loved it. I've also used these chips in cookies with macadamia nuts. Here are the real ingredients as listed on the package (the ingredients on this website page are not correct at the time I posted this review): sugar, palm kernel oil, whole milk powder, nonfat dry milk, palm oil, soy lecithin and vanilla. To be honest this tastes better than any white chocolate I've ever bought. Eating the chips straight out of the bag with some pecans is very tempting.<br /><br />~The Rebecca Review", "Leave it to General Mills....to undo nature!<br />Make your own decision, here are the ingredients....<br /><br />&iexcl;Ingredients: Vanilla Ingredients: Rolled Oats, High Maltose Corn Syrup, Sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Crisp Rice (Rice Flour, Sugar, Malt, Salt), Wheat Flakes (Whole Wheat, Sugar, Salt, Malt), Palm Kernel Oil, Corn Meal, Fructose, Canola Oil, Yogurt Powder (Cultured Whey Protein Concentrate, Cultured Skim Milk, Yogurt Cultures), Corn Bran, Maltodextrin, Calcium Carbonate, Nonfat Milk, Soy Lecithin, Salt, Honey, Color Added, Natural Flavor, Lactic Acid, Calcium Lactate, Mixed Tocopherols Added to Retain Freshness, Sunflower Meal, Peanut Flour, Almond Flour. Strawberry Ingredients: Rolled Oats, High Maltose Corn Syrup, Sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Crisp Rice (Rice Flour, Sugar, Malt, Salt), Wheat Flakes (Whole Wheat, Sugar, Salt, Malt), Palm Kernel Oil, Corn Meal, Fructose, Canola Oil, Yogurt Powder (Cultured Whey Protein Concentrate, Cultured Skim Milk, Yogurt Cultures), Corn Bran, Maltodextrin, Calcium Carbonate, Nonfat Milk, Soy Lecithin, Salt, Honey, Red 40 Lake and other Color Added, Natural Flavor, Dried Strawberries, Citric Acid, Baking Soda, Mixed Tocopherols Added to Retain Freshness, Sunflower Meal, Peanut Flour, Almond Flour. Blueberry Ingredients: Rolled Oats, High Maltose Corn Syrup, Sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Crisp Rice (Rice Flour, Sugar, Malt, Salt), Wheat Flakes (Whole Wheat, Sugar, Salt, Malt), Palm Kernel Oil, Corn Meal, Fructose, Canola Oil, Yogurt Powder (Cultured Whey Protein Concentrate, Cultured Skim Milk, Yogurt Cultures), Corn Bran, Maltodextrin, Calcium Carbonate, Nonfat Milk, Soy Lecithin, Salt, Honey, Color (Blue 2 Lake, Red 40 Lake and other Color Added), Natural Flavor, Dried Blueberries, Citric Acid, Malic Acid, Mixed Tocopherols Added to Retain Freshness, Sunflower Meal, Peanut Flour, Almond Flour.", "If you were to imagine drinking hot chocolate in an ice storm, that might be close to the experience of smooth chocolaty bliss merging with ice crystals slipping through a straw and melting onto your tongue.<br /><br />Ingredients: Sugar, non-fat dry milk, dextrose and cocoas processed with alkali. The blend of cocoa powders is especially rich and smooth.<br /><br />This is a super fast dessert to make because all you do is put milk (even nonfat milk works) in a blender, add the packet of cocoa and then blend with a few cups of ice.<br /><br />Within seconds of sharing this with my husband, we both knew we had been drinking this beverage too fast. Brain freeze! You can drink this much faster than a milkshake. You have been warned. It is tempting and delicious, but may need to be sipped more slowly...or not.<br /><br />Optional toppings include whipped cream and of course chocolate shavings. Sipping this while wearing Opium perfume is a fun experience. It seems to enhance the experience and add new levels to the chocolate perfection. Oh I think I feel a sugar rush coming on...<br /><br />My favorite way to drink this:<br /><br />1. Turn on heating blanket when the weather turns cold.<br /><br />2. Climb into bed wearing something silky.<br /><br />3. Sip away while reading poetry.<br /><br />So delicious!<br /><br />~The Rebecca Review", "It seems Enfamil learned the same lesson Coca Cola did with the new Coke - if it ain't broke, don't fix it! If you tried the \"new and improved\" Enfamil Toddler formula and hated it, good news! This 5-pack 15oz Enfamil appears to be the original toddler formula that our kids loved, that doesn't leave a greasy film and doesn't curdle. It is NOT the \"new and improved\" natural milk flavor one with corn syrup as the second ingredient that has parents up in arms.<br /><br />The packaging and label on the amazon listing look the same, but it arrives in a plain box with five refill bags. It has:<br />* nonfat milk and vegetable oil (palm olein, soy, coconut and sunflower oils), instead of the whole milk of the \"new\" version<br />* corn syrup solids as the third ingredient, not the second<br />* no natural flavoring added<br />* the formula doesn't curdle after an hour and there is no greasy film, so washing bottles is a whole lot easier.<br />* the same 160 calories per 8 fluid oz as the new version; however, protein has been reduced, from 6 to 4 grams. Carbohydrates are down as well, from 21 to 16.8 grams. Fat has increased, from 6 to 8.5 g. 860 g of linoleic acid now appear on the label. In terms of vitamins Iodine, Selenium and Vitamin B12 have been added. Please see comments for additional nutrition information.<br /><br />I've also found cans with the same \"old\" formula recently in stores (with nonfat milk as the first ingredient), mixed in with the new version with whole milk. It can be confusing so you'll need to read the label to know which is which. It's not clear if the manufacturer has quietly started phasing out its new and improved version (the refill packs with the non-fat milk formula have a 2013 expiration date vs the new formula which said 2012). In any case, it's great if they have as I haven't found another alternative for toddler formula I liked.<br /><br />The Enfamil Toddler formula is balanced nutritionally for toddlers. However, it is expensive so for my twins, I'm looking at other alternatives to supplement their meals, instead of toddler formula. with a balanced diet is just as good nutritionally and a lot less expensive.Carnation Instant Breakfast No Sugar Added, Chocolate, 8 ct (Quantity of 4) can provide added nutrition and <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ARPKBW\">PediaSure Nutrition Drink, Lactose Free, Vanilla, 8-Ounce Bottles (Pack of 24)</a> is indicated for weight gain and to fill in nutritional gaps, especially if you have a picky eater.<br /><br />As always, check with your pediatrician when making a change in formula or diet.", "My wife bought one 10 ounce canister of Trader Joe's Spicy Chai this summer, and I wish she had purchased several packs of this stuff. Since we live in China, after we drink our seven servings it will probably be many months before we have a cup of this chai. Each serving is 170 calories (30 from fat), and it is very easy to make. Simply mix one scoop (3 tablespoons) with six ounces of hot water. If you want it cold, mix a scoop with two ounces of hot water, two ounces of cold water or milk, and add eight ounces of ice. I prefer it hot although you cannot go wrong with the drink regardless of the temperature. Some of the yummy ingredients include sugar cane, nonfat MILK, coconut oil, black tea, honey, cinnamon, clove, ginger, and vanilla extract. No artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives are made with this product. Why you wouldn't like Trader Joe's Spicy Chai Latte is beyond me.", "I wish I'd known the ingredient list for Hershey's Cinnamon Chips when I bought these (the ingredient list was not part of the product description as the time of this review). There's no real cinnamon in them. I had been using King Arthur's mini cinnamon chips previously (ingredients: sugar, palm oil, cinnamon, nonfat dry milk, soy lecithin) and was happy with them, but I was curious about Hershey's chips. They were cheaper than King Arthur's, and I'd heard people rave about the Hershey's cinnamon chips.<br /><br />Well, curiosity killed the cat. Now I have a lot of bags of Hershey's cinnamon chips that I don't want to use in my baked goods..... I might end up using them if I'm baking something to give away where the person eating it won't know I made it. I used my King Arthur chips in Cinnamon Chip Bread, great results, but when I switched to Hershey's, the chips kinda melt and get mixed a little with the bread dough, and that turned my bread YELLOW. Artificial colors are on the ingredient list before the natural & artificial flavor.... that's a lot of artificial color! I usually don't care about artificial ingredients, I'm a junk food addict who drools at the sight of bright orange Doritos, but the yellow bread the Hershey's cinnamon chips made was displeasing. Not to mention the flavor of the bread, which was negatively affected by the Hershey's chips. Didn't have that same sweet cinnamon flavor that the King Arthur chips give.<br /><br />Why'd I give this product 3 stars instead of 1 star? My husband didn't care about the changes in the bread, he'll eat anything I turn my nose up at, so he'll probably end up eating stuff I make for him with the Hershey's cinnamon chips. Hopefully my bags of chips won't go to waste, but I won't buy Hershey's cinnamon chips again.<br /><br />Ingredient list for Hershey's Cinnamon Chips:<br />Sugar; nonfat milk; partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (palm kernel and soybean oil); palm kernel oil; contains 2% or less of: cornstarch; artificial colors (Yellow 6 Lake; Yellow 5 Lake; Blue 2 Lake); natural and artificial flavor; salt; palm oil; soy lecithin.", "See my pics with ruler to show size. Came double boxed with packing to protect it.<br />Napa Mustard co. Sweet & spicy Mustard small 4 oz jar. Best by Mar 2013 INGREDIENTS: distilled Vinegar, Mustard seed, sugar, salt, spices & turmeric. No Known allergens.<br /><br />MARIN BEE COMPANY California Wildflower Honey small glass jar 9 oz. 100% Pure Raw Honey porduct of USA. ALLERGY: not recommended for children under the age of one year.<br /><br />Brown & Haley ALMOND ROCA® Butter crunch Toffee .77 oz gold box has 2 pieces ingredients: sugar, almonds, butter (cream milk, salt) , vegetable oil ( coconut, and / or palm and / or palm kernel oils), cocoa processed with alkali, skim milk powder, whey ( milk), soy lecithin 9an emulsifier), cocoa butter, unsweetened chocolate and vanilla.<br />* ALLERGY : contains tree nuts, milk products, and soy, manufactured on shared equipment that processes peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, soy, and wheat.<br /><br />Brown & Haley CASHEW ROCA® Butter crunch Toffee 1.27 oz gold box has 3 pieces ingredients: sugar, dry roasted cashews, butter (cream milk, salt) , vegetable oil ( coconut, and / or palm and / or palm kernel oils), cocoa processed with alkali, skim milk powder, whey ( milk), soy lecithin 9an emulsifier), cocoa butter, unsweetened chocolate and vanilla.<br />* ALLERGY: contains tree nuts, milk products, and soy, manufactured on shared equipment that processes peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, soy, and wheat.<br /><br />The Flying Table TAVOLARE SAVORY SNACK 2 oz yellow box inside clear sealed bag of snack mix ( looks like chex snack mix). INGREDIENTS: enriched flour, ( wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin and folic acid), salt, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, corn syrup, monosodium glutamate, corn syrup solids, sugar, malt dextrin, sucrose, torula yeast, garlic powder, dried worchestershire sauce (molasses, vinegar, corn syrup, salt, carmel (color) garlic, flour sucrose, spices, tamarind, natural flavor, sulfites), bleached flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour), whole wheat, rye flour, onion powder, garlic, food starch modified, dried molasses, carmel ( color) spices, sesame seeds, caraway seeds, disodium inosinate, disodium gluanylate, vinegar, canola oil, olive oil, yeast, whey, nonfat milk, citric acid, natural flavor, baking soda. * ALLERGY: milk products, and soy, and wheat. Not Vegetarian:<br /><br />**PRODUCT OF INDONESIA** Vineyard Collection Three Pepper Blend Water Crackers red box 4 oz inside foil bag of little round crackers. INGREDIENTS: wheat flour, palm oil, milk powder, salt , leavening agent (sodium bicarbonate and ammonium bicarbonate), yeast, green leek, sugar, pepper. * ALLERGY: milk products, and wheat.<br /><br />ARTISAN BREADSTICKS Baguette BOULANGERIE 4.2 oz tall yellow box. Inside 4 separate foil packs each with about 12 little ribbed cracker sticks. ( taste like Ritz crackers). Some were broken but tasted fine. INGREDIENTS: wheat flour, vegetable oil (palm oil), maize starch, milk powder, salt , leavening agent (sodium bicarbonate and ammonium bicarbonate), yeast, sugar. * ALLERGY: milk products and wheat.<br /><br />FONTAZZI BUTTER TOFFEE PRETZELS handmade in small batches red gold box 2 oz. Inside sealed clear pack with about 12 quarter size pretzels. INGREDIENTS: toffee ( sugar, butter, baking soda, soy lecithin, natural corn oil), Pretzels ( enriched wheat flour ( niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin and folic acid), corn syrup, salt, yeast, sodium bicarbonate, malt extract and artificial flavor. ALLERGY: milk , wheat, soy. Manufactured in facility that may process eggs, peanuts, and other tree nuts.<br /><br />Holly Baking traditional recipe BUTTER COOKIES yellow box 6 oz. Inside sealed clear bag around clear tray of 12 - 2\" cookies. Best before 1/26/13 . INGREDIENTS: flour ( wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin and folic acid), butter, sugar, cane sugar syrup, egg, natural flavors, and baking powder ( sodium bicarbonate and sodium acid pyrophosphate and potato starch). ALLERGY: milk , wheat, egg. Manufactured in facility that may process peanuts, and other tree nuts.<br /><br />BETH'S THE ORIGINAL HEAVENLY LITTLE Chocolate chip cookies. Cream box with gold details. Inside is foil bag with about 10 - 1\" cookies. . INGREDIENTS: wheat flour, brown sugar, semi-sweet chocolate chips (sugar, chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, soy lecithin {an emulsifier}, butter, whole eggs, vanilla extract, nonfat dry milk, baking soda. ALLERGY: milk , wheat, egg and soy.<br /><br />**PRODUCT OF INDONESIA** All Natural DOLCETTO WAFER ROLLS premium chocolate 4.4 oz cream box printed with vintage city in brown. Inside foil pack over tray with about 24 - 4\" long filled wafer rolls cookies. INGREDIENTS: wheat flour, cane sugar, palm oil, cocoa powder, milk powder, lecithin, salt, natural vanilla flavor. ALLERGY: milk , wheat, and soy.<br /><br />**MADE IN SWITZERLAND** GODIVA Chocolatier GODIVA SIGNATURE Biscuits. In a copper and gold raised design box 3.5 oz. Inside gold go diva print foil around tray with 12 square cookies each topped with chocolate raised piece of lady go diva on a horse. INGREDIENTS: milk, chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, milk, chocolate, skim milk, soya lecithin an emulsifier, vanilla ), unbleached wheat flour, sugar, vegetable oil ( palm kernel) potato starch, invert sugar, skim milk, butter, glucose syrup, butter oil, malt, salt, leavening (sodium bicarbonate and ammonium bicarbonate), tartaric acid, vanilla.. ALLERGY: milk , wheat, and soy. May contain tree nuts, eggs, and sesame.<br /><br />GODIVA CHOCOLATIER Classic Belgian chocolates Nice 7.2 ounce Gold box about 6\" x 7\"<br />with stretch ribbon bow. Under lid is sealed bottom box with an assortment of Godiva chocolates. And on top of the seal is ingredients list and a folded pamphlet telling about go diva chocolate and with picks of each and descriptions (so you know which candy your are eating).. Even though there are 16 holes, 1 square had 4 different 1' pieces of different chocolate like white, dark etc. Godiva Ingredients<br />Godiva Chocolates are made from high quality ingredients. The bittersweet and milk chocolate are made primarily from fine, high-flavor cocoa beans. In the formulation of our fillings, dairy butter and heavy cream . Many of our chocolates contain hazelnut praline. This filling is made from finely ground hazelnuts, sugar and chocolate.<br />Godiva's Cherry Cordials are made with cherries. They contain no food coloring . Godiva dried fruits as ingredients for fruit-filled confections. In addition, pure additive-free cherry and raspberry juices . ALLERGY: milk , hazelnuts. May contain tree nuts.<br /><br />NUNES FARMS from Farm to Market All natural Confections MOCHA ALMONDS. Cream , brown and red box 8 oz box. Inised clear bag of about 55 choclate coated almonds. INGREDIENTS: milk chocolate (sugar, whole milk, cocoa butter, chocolate liquor, soy lecithin an emulsifier, Pure vanilla ), almonds, cocoa butter coating ( sugar, cocoa butter, nonfat milk, cream, natural flavor, soy lecithin, Pure vanilla) , ground coffee, sugar, corn syrup, tapioca dextrin, confectioner's glaze. ALLERGY: milk , tree nuts almonds, and soy.<br /><br />NUNES FARMS from Farm to Market All natural Fancy Nuts Roasted Salted Pistachios clear bag 4 oz. Nuts in shells. INGREDIENTS: California Premium Dry roasted Pistachios, Salt. ALLERGY : nuts<br /><br />LOS OLIVO'S ORCHARDS ALMONDS gold box with orchard pic 2 oz. Inside clear bag of about 40 almonds. INGREDIENTS: California grown almonds, sunflower and / or safflower oil, salt, cornstarch, natural hickory smoke,hydrolyzed corn protein, torula yeast, and spice extracts. ALLERGY: tree nuts, corn, yeast.<br /><br />SONOMA JACKS Gorumet cheese Wedges Paresan Peppercorn Round yellow beighe box with pic . Sealed edge.4 ounce. Contains 6 .67 oz wedges. Best by dec 21 12. INGREDIENTS: all natural montery, jack an dparmesan cheese ( pasteurized milk, cheese cultures, salt , enzymes) water, natural flavor, sodium phosphate, nonfat milk, peppercorn, sodium citrate. ALLERGY: milk --refrigerate after opening.<br /><br />** PRODUCT OF SPAIN** MILLE LACS FOODS Spanish Margarilla Olives Mtneeil Pimento stuffed. Tall small glass jar 2 oz. INGREDIENTS: olives, water, minced pimento (pimento, sodium alginate, guar gum, calcium chloride, potassium sorbate ), salt, latic acid, Machine pitted may contain pits. ALLERGY: milk --refrigerate after opening.", "Fiber One Honey Clusters is a sweet, crunchy cereal that I enjoy eating as a dry snack or in a bowl with some cold milk. It's hard to find a cereal that's both good for you and taste good as well, and General Mills has accomplished that superbly with this product. Happy eats!", "The fingers were good but got very dry quickly. They were very much like baklava.", "Purchased this jerky with S&S discount after reading some good reviews and was very disapointed with the quality of meat. About 80% of the pieces were very dry and hard - note that some of the package was good (primarily in the middle of the package) and some of it was too dry.", "This is a review from Marc's wife:<br /> I have throughly tested this Product.<br />Order this exact one: Nestle Nido makes a confusing array of products with similar names and labels!<br /> Con:Taste not IDENTICAL to whole milk!<br /> Pro:Dissolves easily, smells good.<br /> -Tried this as creamer in tea with sugar-a person used to whole milk in his tea thought it tasted fine.<br /> -in cooking- tried it in my favorite pancake recipe-no perceived difference.<br /> -tried using it as substitute for milk in a couple of sauces: no complaints from anyone, I thought it tasted slighty low-fat. Certainly in a cheese or other highly flavored sauce should be fine.<br /> -substituted for half the non-fat dried milk in our instant hot cholate mix recipe. Everyone raved about the flavor! I noticed our mix wasn't being used up at the same phenomenal clip as people professed themselves more satisfied.<br />- Perfect for single people who want small amounts of milk, mostly for creamer in hot beverages. If you're going to use it slowly, maybe put in a glass jar in the fridge.<br />- Disaster supplies;earthquake,hurricane,etc.<br />- save on gasoline! Won't have to make trips for the sole purpose of someone having milk in their coffee or cereal!<br />- Camping,etc. where weight is an issue;bring this powder and reconstitute as needed.<br />Buy it-you will love it! If two cans seems a big quantity for you, give/resell the other one to a friend,neighbor,etc.<br />NEW ADVANTAGES_ADDED 8-01-11<br />-Easier to use in cooking than liquid milk- in any recipe where it calls for scalding and then cooling the milk, you can skip that step by just mixing up the amount of milk used in your recipe from the milk powder and lukewarm water. Faster and saves on pots needed too.<br />-Absolutely ESSENTIAL if you make yougurt at home. Milk solids are added to milk in making yougurt to stiffen the milk so the resulting yougurt will have the texture people have come to expect from store-bought yogurt.By using this whole milk powder instead of nonfat milk powder, the yougurt thickens better, and it tastes better-for the best yogurt you have ever eaten, try homemade yogurt made with whole milk AND this whole milk powder!!", "For DECADES I loved Ovaltine! I loved the way the crunchy crystals tasted and felt in my mouth; sometimes I would just eat a dry spoonful of Ovaltine straight from the jar and wash it down with a glug of milk. Good times!<br /><br />This USED to be more nutritional than Nesquik, but not anymore. Now, it's just like Nesquik, only sweeter and with LESS of a chocolate taste. Ovaltine isn't special anymore. If I want a chocolate-like flavoring in my milk now, I just buy whatever's cheaper.<br /><br />Since the flavor, texture, and nutritional value have changed so drastically, why even call it Ovaltine anymore? VERY disappointed.", "I tried this cereal first as a dry snack, and that was quite a treat. Each little nugget of cereal is shaped roughly like a shredded wheat biscuit, only much, much smaller. When you bit into the nuggest, you find a tiny center of chocolate---like a small, small piece of a chocolate bar! It's enough so you can taste it separately from the cereal part, and it made this feel like a real snack treat.<br /><br />This morning, I tried them in milk, and that wasn't quite as much of a treat. Somehow eating them with milk made the chocolate centers not stand out as much, and they just tasted like your standard chocolate cereal, which to me anyway always seems a little overwhelming in the morning. I like how cereal like Cocoa Puffs makes the milk into chocolate milk, but this cereal didn't seem to have the powdery type chocolate that did that quite as much. The milk was mildly chocolatey by the end of the blow, but not severely. They stayed pretty crunchy in milk, and were a good average cereal.<br /><br />So, if you like a little chocolate pick-me-up snack, I think that's what you'd like these for. I would guess they have a lot less calories dry than most chocolate treats, and they satisfy! A pretty cool idea for a cereal.", "Since my local Robeks just closed, I had to resort to making my own Acai Energizers at home. Luckily, I used to work at Robeks so I knew the recipe. This is the exact same puree that Robeks uses for their acais! To make the exact acai energizer you will need frozen strawberries, blueberries, pineapple sherbet, and nonfat frozen yogurt. I make mine without the sherbet and yogurt and it still tastes very similar. I'm going to start playing around with frozen pineapples and shredded coconut too!", "I thought coming from Grandma, these cookies would be moist and good. They were very dry and chalky." ]

[ "Home buyers and owners were warned yesterday by two separate surveys of the property market that house prices were continuing to fall." ]

[ "FireWire faces major challenges from other interfaces and a stagnating marketshare.", "Property firm British Land sees its nine-month profit rise 12%, following a new low-tax structure.", "U.S. consumer sentiment stagnated in early September as doubts about the economy and the job market persisted, a report indicated on Friday.", "This story is a follow-up to our report from Tuesday, October 12, about the posting of The Ten Commandments on government property.", "Stocks edged up for the week, continuing a month-long rally in the face of mediocre economic news and more-positive developments from technology firms and energy markets.", "Italian manufacturers confidence stagnated in October, highlighting concern that record oil prices will damp consumer spending and slow the pace of growth in the 12 nations sharing the euro.", "Ericsson missed market forecasts for second-quarter earnings as its multimedia drive produced disappointing results and sales in its key European market stagnated, sending its shares down 3 percent.", "French carmaker Renault is to unveil 12 new models next year -- including several low-cost autos -- in an aggressive global strategy to turn around stagnating sales, the company said Wednesday.", "The EU ordered Italy on Thursday to clean up Naples within a month — or face legal action.", "Up to 1200 store staff employed by US supermarket operator Kmart face redundancy as Home Depot takes over 13 properties following an early summer agreement.", "Westfield Group, the world&#39;s biggest owner of shopping malls by market value, teamed up with Multiplex Group, an Australian property developer, and David and Simon Reuben to bid for Chelsfield Plc, a UK property developer.", "In November, 12 states will vote on initiatives on protecting private property from seizure and regulation.", "The European Commission said Thursday it would draw up plans to boost the online market for music, films and games while promising to uphold intellectual property rights.", "Allstate Corp. and Citizens Property Insurance Corp., which reported the biggest losses from last month&#39;s Hurricane Charley, may face the largest claims from Hurricane Frances", "com September 14, 2004, 9:12 AM PT. With the economy slowly turning up, upgrading hardware has been on businesses radar in the past 12 months as their number two priority.", "MGIC Investment Corp. , the largest U S mortgage insurer, will buy number three Radian Group Inc. for $4.9 billion in stock to reduce computer and salary expenses in a stagnating market.", "Maltas leading real estate organisation Dhalia, has set up a new company, Luxury Living, geared to provide an exclusive and personalized service to clients seeking up-market and luxury properties.", "THREE key Australian listed property trusts are preparing to slug it out for greater market share in the UK property market. Westfield Group, Multiplex Group and the soon-to-be-merged Lend Lease Corp Ltd and", "The 19-year-old faces up to 37 months in prison after admitting to creating the \"MSBlast.B\" variant.", "By Andre Briscoe, The Monterey County Herald, Calif. Dec. 12--Del Rey Oaks residents will have another month to examine initial plans for future development on former Fort Ord property that the soon fall under city control.", "Emerging markets spark growth The total number of mobile connections in the world reached 2.5bn on Thursday, having passed the two billion mark just 12 months ago.…", "Long a model for protecting rural areas, the state faces a property-rights backlash.", "The property market in Scotland is outperforming London, according to latest figures.", "Sales at Ford fell for the seventh consecutive month while General Motors gained market share but announced that it would cut production 12 percent in the fourth quarter.", "Hundreds of people face losing their retirement homes in Spain due to shady property dealings.", "China&#39;s central bank raised interest rates for the second time in less than a month on Friday in an attempt to rein in soaring food prices, excessive bank lending and bubbles in the property and stock markets.", "MOSCOW, Mar 12 (IPS) - Russian homosexuals are taking up a new fight to assert their rights in the face of what the mayor of Moscow has called \"satanic\" practices.", "AC Milan striker Ronaldo faces up to nine months out after rupturing a tendon in his right knee.", "With the economy slowly turning up, upgrading hardware has been on businesses radar in the past 12 months as their number two priority.", "London's luxury homes are now the most expensive in the world, experts say, with foreign buyers, salary bonuses and steady interest rates driving prices up in the capital's overheated property market.", "Federal police Friday charged two U.S. pilots involved in a collision with a Brazilian jet that killed 154 people, and if convicted, they could face up to 12 years in prison.", "U.S. Treasury prices climbed on Wednesday after reports showing signs of stagnation in the labor market offered excuses to buy despite a warning from the Federal Reserve this week that interest rates were too low." ]

[ "1.37cm" ]

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[ "Updated 1:50 p.m. ET: (Correcting that brothers shared an apartment in Cambridge, not Watertown.) The suspects in Monday's deadly Boston Marathon explosions and the Thursday night murder of a police officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are two brothers from a former Soviet republic who were in the United States legally for years, and lived together in a Cambridge, Mass., apartment. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, on Friday afternoon was still being sought by police. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed Friday morning in a shootout with police in Watertown. NPR's Joe Shapiro interviewed a woman in Toronto who said she's the aunt of the two suspects. She said the boys grew up in Kyrgyzstan and spent a year in Chechnya, 1994. The aunt said the Tsarnaev family is originally from the southern Russia republic of Chechnya, but like other Chechens was forced to leave in 1944 during World War II and relocated to Kyrgyzstan. Chechnya, the mostly Muslim republic in the North Caucasus, was the scene of two bloody wars after the breakup of the Soviet Union, as separatists fought Russia for independence before prime minister Vladimir Putin crushed the rebellion in 1999. Terrorism linked to Chechen fighters included a 2002 attack on a Moscow theater that killed 129 hostages, and the 2004 siege of a primary school in Beslan, near Chechnya, that killed more than 300, about half of them children. The Wall Street Journal reports that the family includes two sisters. It says one brother arrived in the U.S. in 2002, and the second in 2004. It says the boy's father is an auto mechanic who has received treatment in Germany for brain cancer. The Associated Press says the father is now in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan. Dzhokhar TsarnaevAge 19: Born July 22, 1993 Has been in the United States since he was 12. Attended and graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where in 2011 his wrestling prowess — he captained the school team for two years — earned him a citation as one of the \"Greater Boston League Winter All Stars.\" Assistant high school wrestling coach Peter Payack told The Boston Globe he was dedicated and a leader, was loved and respected by his fellow wrestlers, and was the \"opposite of a loner.\" He was among students who received a $2,500 college scholarship through the city of Cambridge, Mass., in 2011. He was a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, which on Friday posted this message: \"UMass Dartmouth has learned that a person being sought in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing has been identified as a student registered at UMass Dartmouth. The campus is closed. Individuals on campus should shelter in place unless instructed otherwise.\" On Vkontakte — described as the Russian equivalent of Facebook — he lists his personal priority as \"Career and money,\" and his world view as \"Islam.\" A longtime classmate in an interview with ABC News described him as \"just a great kid. He was fun to be around. He always had a positive attitude.\" CNN interviewed a classmate who called him a good wrestler and \"a normal kid. He parties, sometimes he smokes. He was raised here. He was just as American as I am.\" Tamerlan Tsarnaev (killed in shootout with police)Age 26 A boxer who participated in a 2009 New England Golden Gloves tournament, where he was described as being from Lowell, Mass. The Lowell Sun newspaper reported that he won his first fight in 2004, and was quoted as saying: \"I like the USA. America has a lot of jobs. That's something Russia doesn't have.\" The paper also reported that he said he loved music, studied piano and violin when he was younger, and in 2009 and 2010 participated as part of Team New England in the National Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions. A photographer's online gallery includes a section on Tamerlan Tsarnaev, called \"Will Box for Passport,\" which appears to show him sparring and practicing at the Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts Center. The section of the site was removed Friday, but described as a Muslim who abstains from drinking and smoking, and is quoted as saying, \"I don't have a single American friend,\" and that \"there are no values anymore.\" He was a part-time student at Bunker Hill Community College from 2006 to 2008, in an accounting program. In 2009, he was arrested for assault and battery fo a girlfriend. An uncle, Alvi Tsarnaev, tells USA Today that the older brother called him Thursday evening for the first time in years. \"He told me he was happy,\" he said. \"He was asking, 'Did you pay your mortgage?' I told him I was trying to pay. I asked him what he was doing. He said, 'I fix cars, I got married, got a baby.' Note: As happens when stories such as this are developing, there will likely be reports that turn out to be mistaken. Wednesday, for example, there were reports from CNN, the AP, WBUR and others that authorities either had arrested a suspect or were about to do that. It turned out that no one had been arrested or taken into custody. We w" ]

[ "The investigation into the April 15 bombings at the Boston Marathon is widening, with authorities looking at about a dozen people to see whether they might have helped the two main suspects either before or after the attack, law enforcement officials familiar with the probe tell NPR's Dina Temple-Raston. At the same time, officials tell Dina, they do not think Mikhail Allakhverdov — the man known as Misha — played any part in the attacks. As we reported Monday, while some relatives of the bombing suspects have alleged that Allakhverdov turned suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev toward radical Islam, Allakhverdov told a writer for The New York Review of Books that he did no such thing. He added that he had not had contact with Tsarnaev in the past three years and would have tried to stop the bombings if he had known about them. According to Dina, law enforcement officials say investigators also have spoken with Allakhverdov — an Armenian convert to Islam who is now living in Rhode Island. Officials say he has been helpful in the investigation, volunteering to turn over his computer and providing more information about Tsarnaev. Allakhverdov is no longer a \"person of interest,\" officials say. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar, are suspected of having placed two bombs near the finish line of the marathon. The subsequent explosions killed three people and wounded more than 250. On April 18, authorities say, the brothers shot and killed a MIT campus police officer. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died early on April 19 from injuries he received during a gun battle with police in the Boston suburb of Watertown, Mass. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured in Watertown after an all-day manhunt that shut down much of the Boston metropolitan area. He has been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction and is being held at a federal prison medical facility near Boston. Officials tell Dina that among those being investigated are two students from Kazakhstan who were friends of the Tsarnaev brothers. The two students were arrested in New Bedford, Mass., shortly after the bombings and are being held on immigration charges. Another thread in the investigation, as we said Monday, involves Tamerlan Tsarnaev's wife: \"The Wall Street Journal is reporting that investigators found female DNA on at least one of the bombs used in Boston. It's unclear whom the DNA belongs to or whether that person helped carry out the attacks. The newspaper also reported that the FBI collected a DNA sample from Katherine Russell, the widow of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older brother who died in a shootout with police. She is said to be cooperating with investigators.\" Some related headlines: -- \"Nation's Top Spy Orders Broad Review Into U.S. Government Handling Of Intelligence Information Before Boston Marathon Bombings.\" (The Boston Globe) -- \"Tsarnaev Family Received $100,000 In Benefits.\" (The Boston Herald) -- \"Marathon Bombing Investigation Turns Again To Rhode Island.\" (The Providence Journal) -- Noted Death Penalty Lawyer, Who Represented Unabomber And Others, Joins Tsarnaev's Defense Team. (Bloomberg News)", "The man known as Misha who relatives of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects have alleged may have turned the elder Tsarnaev brother toward a radical form of Islam says he did no such thing and would have tried to stop the attack if he had known about it. \"I wasn't his teacher,\" Mikhail Allakhverdov (Misha) said Sunday of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. \"If I had been his teacher, I would have made sure he never did anything like this.\" Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died April 19 of injuries received during a gun battle with police in Watertown, Mass. His 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar, the other suspect, was captured later that day in Watertown. He is being held at a prison medical facility outside Boston. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction. Three people were killed and more than 250 were wounded April 15 by two blasts near the marathon's finish line. The brothers also allegedly killed a MIT police officer later that week. It was writer Christian Caryl who tracked down Allakhverdov. Caryl writes about their conversation in The New York Review of Books' NYR blog. According to Caryl: -- \"Having been referred by a family in Boston that was close to the Tsarnaevs, I found Allakhverdov at his home in Rhode Island, in a lower middle class neighborhood, where he lives in modest, tidy apartment with his elderly parents.\" -- \"Allakhverdov said he had known Tamerlan in Boston, where he lived until about three years ago, and has not had any contact with him since.\" -- Allakhverdov said he has \"been cooperating entirely with the FBI. I gave them my computer and my phone and everything I wanted to show I haven't done anything. And they said they are about to return them to me. And the agents who talked told me they are about to close my case.\" Update at 6:25 p.m. ET. News Report: Female DNA Found on Bomb The Wall Street Journal is reporting that investigators found female DNA on at least one of the bombs used in Boston. It's unclear whom the DNA belongs to or whether that person helped carry out the attacks. The newspaper also reported that the FBI collected a DNA sample from Katherine Russell, the widow of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older brother who died in a shootout with police. She is said to be cooperating with investigators. Meanwhile, President Obama spoke to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. The White House said that the two men discussed, among other things, \"the close cooperation that the United States has received from Russia on the Boston marathon attack.\" Update at 1:35 p.m. ET. Lawyer Says Misha Is Cooperating With Authorities: \"A lawyer representing the family of Mikhail 'Misha' Allakhverdov, who has been linked to one of the men suspected in the Boston Marathon bombings, said Monday that Allakhverdov had been cooperating with authorities and had answered all the questions asked of him,\" The Providence Journal writes. \"Atty. Richard Nicholson spoke briefly about 12:30 p.m. Monday to a group of reporters who had gathered outside Allakhverdov's River Street apartment.\" Earlier: -- Dzhokhar Tsarnaev \"is able to speak and has been interacting with staff at the Federal Medical Center Devens,\" CNN reports. It cited a spokesman for the facility, John Colautti. -- The suspects' mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaev, continues to argue that \"her sons are innocent and that she's no terrorist,\" The Associated Press says. -- Over the weekend, The Washington Post published a long profile of the Tsarnaev family: \"A Faded Portrait of An Immigrant's American Dream.\"", "Police say images from video surveillance cameras implicate New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez in the murder of a friend. Cameras caught Hernandez driving through the streets of Boston and in and out of an industrial park south of the city in the moments before and after the time that police say the murder took place last week. And security cameras helped catch the Boston marathon bombing suspects. Like many communities across the nation after 9/11, Boston installed a vast network of police and privately-owned security cameras intended to bolster security and keep crime down. But there&#8217;s now a raging debate about how long data from those cameras should be kept, and who has access to the data once it&#8217;s gathered. Police in Cambridge, where the Boston bombing suspects lived, want to turn on several Department of Homeland Security-funded cameras that have been banned from use for the past four years. &#8220;It&#8217;s not a super comfortable thought,&#8221; Cambridge City Councilor Craig Kelley told Here & Now. &#8220;I&#8217;m not happy with the idea. I wish we didn&#8217;t live in a world where these things were arguably &#8212; I wouldn&#8217;t say necessary &#8212; but arguably useful tools.&#8221; The town of Brookline, which is along the Boston marathon route, is also debating the use of security cameras. Stateline reporter Maggie Clark has been writing about the national debate over surveillance imagery from security cameras and drones. \nNYC’s Web Of Cameras Can Catch Unattended Bags\nNPR: In More Cities, A Camera On Every Corner, Park And Sidewalk\n Stories by Maggie Clark: \nSecurity Cameras Were Key to Finding Boston Bombers\nBoston Bombings Show Future Use for Police Drones\n\nGuests:\n\nCraig Kelley, city councilor in Cambridge, Mass. He tweets @CraigKelleyone.\nMaggie Clark, reporter for Stateline. She tweets @maggieclark320.\n ROBIN YOUNG, HOST: Well, after officials here in Boston charged New England football star Aaron Hernandez with murder, they said they've been able to track him from the victim's home to the industrial park where the body was found on security camera video. Security video also tracked the Tsarnaev brothers, the Boston bombing suspects. But in 2009, the city council in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the brothers lived, decided not to use Homeland Security-funded cameras. They worried that cameras were an invasion of privacy. Well, that thinking has changed somewhat, reflecting a shift across the country, as we're going to hear. But let's start in Cambridge. The Homeland Security-funded cameras are mounted high up in parks and squares. They're not turned on. But the questions now aren't as much about cameras, which are everywhere, they're about who gets the footage. Cambridge police say they'll adopt the policy of letting citizens know when the cameras are on, and they'll share data only with other law enforcement. Cambridge City Councilor Craig Kelley is with us. Craig, it's fair to say you're a left-leaning councilor, but you're now for turning on these cameras. CRAIG KELLEY: At this point I'd say - with this policy in place, I'm comfortable with turning them on. YOUNG: The policy that the data isn't shared with someone outside the city? KELLEY: Yes, the data is protected. That doesn't mean it's never shared because there might be opportunities where someone says listen, we need this data, and the court says yes, or whatever, but as proposed, these cameras are on - were they to be on - they would be on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and they would be at the detail that you would see a car. All right, you wouldn't be able to read the license plate, you wouldn't be able to recognize the people walking down the street. They'd be relatively high-level cameras. Now if something happened, the emergency communications center staff, once they've received the proper training, would be able to access whatever the camera - and right now we have six, but this policy is proposed to be flexible and also transparent. So the idea is that no one is surprised about what's going on. What one person said in our meetings was radical transparency. So if there were an event, staff could operate them manually, and these are tilt-tilt-zoom cameras, and they could look at whatever it is within the field of vision. And then when that event was over, the cameras would just go back to whatever their regular status is, which is some high level just camera viewing of the area. But as long as the policy is transparent and so forth, I'm OK with that. YOUNG: What do you say to your constituents who say I don't want to have Homeland Security camera that can catch me or my car passing through a square. What do you say to them? KELLEY: I say I understand that. It's not a super-comfortable thought. I'm not happy with the idea. I wish we didn't live in a world where these things were arguably I wouldn't say necessary but arguably useful tools. The question you asked me is more than countered by", "Updated at 3:45 p.m. ET: Federal prosecutors have charged Khairullozhon Matanov with misleading the FBI and destroying evidence relevant to the investigation of last year's Boston Marathon bombing. \"He will plead not guilty,\" Ed Hayden, Matanov's court-appointed public defender told reporters. \"Nothing he did or said was intended to mislead the FBI. And from what I know now, it didn't.\" In an indictment unsealed on Friday, the U.S. attorney's office in Boston alleges that Matanov lied to investigators about his relationship with Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the prime suspects in the case, and attempted to wipe evidence off his computer. \"This is the most significant information that has come out on this incident since the initial arrests,\" Ed Davis, a former Boston police commissioner, told WBZ, the CBS affiliate in Boston. Matanov, a 23-year-old resident of Quincy, appeared at a brief court hearing Friday afternoon. According to the indictment, Matanov is a citizen of Kyrgyzstan who has been living in Massachusetts legally since 2010. Hayden, his attorney, said Matanov came to the U.S. on a student visa and was later granted political asylum. He has worked as a cab driver and said he has no family in the U.S. After entering the U.S., Matanov met and befriended Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed during an altercation with police four days after the bombing. Matanov also knew Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was captured following a massive manhunt and is currently awaiting trial. \"Matanov participated in a variety of activities, including discussing religious topics and hiking up a New Hampshire mountain in order to train, like and praise the 'mujahideen,'\" warriors who defend Islam, the indictment states. Matanov tried to call both brothers in the hours and days following the Boston bombing on April 15, 2013, and saw Tamerlan in person at least twice, prosecutors say. Prosecutors say he had dinner with the Tsarnaev brothers the night of the bombing. They accuse Matanov of making a number of false statements to federal investigators. The indictment states that he \"deleted a large amount of information from his computer, some of which the FBI has been able to restore in an ongoing forensic review.\" Prosecutors suggested recently that evidence suggests the Tsarnaev brothers did not act alone. Matanov is not charged with planning or carrying out the bombings themselves. He was arrested early Friday morning. He faces one count of destroying evidence and three counts of making false or fraudulent statements. If convicted, the maximum sentence for destruction of evidence is 20 years in prison, with the possibility of an eight-year sentence for each false statement count.", "Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings and the crimes that followed, has been moved out of Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center \"and is now confined at the Bureau of Prisons facility FMC Devens at Ft. Devens, Mass.,\" U.S. Marshals Service spokesman Drew Wade said in a statement emailed to reporters Friday morning. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons: \"The Federal Medical Center (FMC) Devens is an administrative facility housing male offenders requiring specialized or long-term medical or mental health care. FMC Devens also has a satellite camp housing minimum security male inmates. \"FMC Devens is located in north central Massachusetts, approximately 39 miles west of Boston and 20 miles north of Worcester, on the decommissioned military base of Fort Devens.\" Tsarnaev, 19, is being treated for injuries he received sometime last Friday during either a gun battle with police in Watertown, Mass., or when authorities opened fire on the boat he was found hiding in there. He's said to be in fair condition. The other suspect in the bombings that killed three people and injured more than 200, as well as the subsequent murder of a MIT police officer and shooting of a Boston area transit officer, was 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev. He was Dzhokhar's brother. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died last Friday from injuries he received during that gun battle in Watertown. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction. The statement from the Marshals Service did not say when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was moved out of the hospital. But New England Cable News reports that \"at about 3:00 am Friday morning, Boston and state police seemed to have left Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.\" Victims of the bombings are being treated at Beth Israel Deaconess. As we noted Wednesday, some of those patients and their families had been upset that the suspect was there. Among the morning's other stories about the bombings and their aftermath, is this piece from The Boston Globe: \"Carjack Victim Recounts His Harrowing Night.\" Identified only as \"Danny,\" the man who says it was his SUV that the suspects carjacked on April 18 adds more harrowing details to the story (as we wrote earlier this week, he had previously spoken with New Hampshire's WMUR-TV). The Globe writes that Danny's 90-minute encounter with the suspects began when a man rapped on his SUV's passenger side window: \"Danny, unable to hear him, lowered the window — and the man reached an arm through, unlocked the door, and climbed in, brandishing a silver handgun. \" 'Don't be stupid,' he told Danny. He asked if he had followed the news about Monday's Boston Marathon bombings. Danny had, down to the release of the grainy suspect photos less than six hours earlier. \" 'I did that,' said the man, who would later be identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev. 'And I just killed a policeman in Cambridge.' \" Danny got away from the suspects, he says, when they had to stop at a gas station because the SUV was low on gas. A sign there said \"cash only.\" The Globe writes that: \"When the younger brother, Dzhokhar, was forced to go inside the Shell Food Mart to pay, older brother Tamerlan put his gun in the door pocket to fiddle with a navigation device — letting his guard down briefly after a night on the run. Danny then did what he had been rehearsing in his head. In a flash, he unbuckled his seat belt, opened the door, stepped through, slammed it behind, and sprinted off at an angle that would be a hard shot for any marksman.\" Another headline this morning worth checking out: \"Anti-Terror Task Force Was Warned of Tamerlan Tsarnaev's Long Trip To Russia.\" (The Washington Post) Our posts about the bombings, the hunt for the suspects and related news are collected here.", "As the investigation continues into the April 15 bombings at the Boston Marathon and the crimes that followed, more names are being added to the story. Here's a guide that we'll keep updating, with links to relevant posts or stories. As always, if new information comes in that changes what is being said about anyone, we will pass that along: THE VICTIMS The three people killed by the blasts were 8-year-old Martin Richard of Dorchester, Mass.; 23-year-old Chinese student Lu Lingzi; and 29-year-old Krystle Campbell of Medford, Mass. On April 18, MIT police officer Sean Collier was shot and killed. Authorities say one of the two main suspects in the bombing was responsible. On April 19, MBTA Transit Police Officer Richard Donohue was seriously wounded during a gun battle with the two suspects in Watertown, Mass. WBUR reports that he expects to make a full recovery. More than 250 people were injured by the explosions. Among the stories NPR has done about them: \"Recovery Begins For Mother, Daughter Injured In Boston.\" The Boston Globe is among several news outlets that have also been telling their stories: \"A Long, Uncertain Road For Limb Patients.\" THE SUSPECTS Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is the younger of the two brothers who authorities say planted the bombs near the marathon's finish line and later in the week killed Officer Collier. Tsarnaev is charged with using a weapon of mass destruction. He became a U.S. citizen in 2012. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died April 19 from injuries he sustained during a gun battle with police in Watertown, Mass. Among the things investigators are looking into is whether he made contact with Muslim extremists during trips to visit his parents in Russia. The Tsarnaev family, ethnic Chechens, came to the U.S. about a decade ago. But the parents later left the U.S. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a legal resident of the U.S. who once hoped to be an Olympic boxer. THE FAMILY Katherine Russell is Tamerlan Tsarnaev's American-born wife. Her attorney says she knew nothing about the bombings beforehand and that she is cooperating with investigators. Zubeidat Tsarnaev is the mother of the two suspects. From Dagestan, where she has been living, she has insisted her sons are innocent. It has also been reported that she encouraged Tamerlan Tsarnaev to embrace Islam, and she \"vaguely discussed\" jihad with him during a 2011 phone conversation that was recorded by Russian authorities. Anzor Tsarnaev is the suspects' father. He, too, is in Dagestan and has said he does not believe his sons were responsible for the bombings. For a detailed account of the Tsarnaev family's \"faded ... American dream,\" see this story by The Washington Post. THE FRIENDS Mikhail Allakhverdov (Misha), is an Armenian-born man living in Rhode Island. Some of the Tsarnaev brothers' family members have accused Allakhverdov of encouraging Tamerlan Tsarnaev to embrace radical Islam. Allakhverdov, though, says he never did that and would have tried to stop the bombing plot if he had known about it. Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov of Kazakhstan, and Robel Phillipos of Cambridge, Mass., are former classmates of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. All three are 19 years old. Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov have been accused of throwing out key evidence — a laptop and empty fireworks canisters — that could link Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to the bombings. Robels is accused of lying to the FBI about what the friends allegedly did. There's much more about the charges against them here. KEY WITNESSES David Henneberry is the Watertown, Mass., man who alerted police when he discovered someone hiding in the boat stored in his backyard. That individual turned out to be Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. \"Danny\" is the Chinese engineer turned entrepreneur who says he was taken hostage by the suspects late on April 18, when they commandeered his SUV. Taking Danny with them, they went to ATM machines to get cash. When they stopped for fuel at a gas station, he was able to escape. Because he left his cellphone in the vehicle, police were able to quickly track the SUV to Watertown, where the gun battle occurred.", "When the young man who stands accused in the Boston Marathon bombings makes his first court appearance Wednesday afternoon, survivors of the explosions that killed three people and wounded more than 260 are expected to be in the room, The Associated Press reports. So are relatives of those killed and wounded. The wire service adds: \"The [Boston] courthouse is expected to be jammed for 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's appearance. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office said space is being reserved in the main courtroom for victims' families, but she wouldn't indicate how many planned to attend. Court officials have set aside an overflow courtroom to broadcast the court hearing for the media.\" Tsarnaev hasn't been seen since the evening of April 19, when he was captured in the Boston suburb of Watertown after an intensive manhunt. He had suffered some gunshot wounds and has been held in a federal prison hospital. On the court's website, it says his arraignment is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. ET. We'll watch for news from the proceeding and update. Authorities say Tsarnaev and his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, who died of injuries suffered during a gun battle with police earlier on April 19, set the bombs that exploded near the marathon's finish line four days before. The three people killed were 8-year-old Martin Richard of Dorchester, Mass., 29-year-old Krystle Campbell of Medford, Mass., and 23-year-old Lu Lingzi of China, a student at Boston University. The brothers are also the lone suspects in the shooting death of MIT police officer Sean Collier, 26, on April 18. They also carjacked an SUV that evening, authorities say. So far, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction and a series of other charges, including \"bombing of a place of public use.\" Ethnic Chechens, the brothers allegedly became radicalized in recent years. Authorities say they found messages that they believe Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wrote in which he indicated that they were trying to avenge the deaths of other Muslims during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The brothers were young boys when they were brought to the U.S. by their parents. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev became a U.S. citizen in 2012. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a legal resident of the U.S. Related — Boston Bombings: A Guide To Who's Who.", "The Boston Marathon bombing suspects are ethnic Chechens with links to the volatile North Caucasus region of Russia. Moscow's reaction to that fact appears to be as complex as the region's turbulent history. So far, official reaction to the story has been muted. State-run news media show clips of President Vladimir Putin condemning the bombings and offering condolences to the people of Boston. He and President Obama also spoke by phone after the attack, which is significant given that relations between Russia and the U.S. have been at a low point recently as the two nations exchange accusations of human rights abuses. There's been relatively little attention, so far, to a key aspect of the story: that the FBI investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the two brothers accused in the bombing, in 2011. That investigation came at the request of an unidentified foreign government. It could well have been Russia, which has reason to fear terrorist attacks after a long history of turmoil in the North Caucasus. The Tsarnaev family has roots in the mountainous part of southern Russia between the Black and Caspian Seas. The Tsarnaevs apparently spent little time in the region, however, a point that was driven home forcefully by Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. \"We do not know such people,\" Kadyrov said. \"They did not live in Chechnya.\" Kadyrov goes on to say the Tsarnaev brothers grew up in America and therefore their actions reflect their American upbringing rather than a Chechen one. Kadyrov is known for his flamboyant rhetoric, but he appears to be right in saying that the Tsarnaevs have had little connection to Chechnya or even to the region. The brothers were reportedly born in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, where the family had lived for decades. Their father, Anzor Tsarnaev, apparently tried to bring the family back to Chechnya around 1994, but that coincided with the start of the first Chechen War. There are records that the brothers went to school for about a year in nearby Dagestan, before the family immigrated to the United States. Anzor Tsarnaev has been giving interviews to Russian and foreign media from Makhachkala, the Dagestani capital. He told interviewers that he had returned to the region because he was ill and believed he was dying. His wife, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, told Russia's RT channel that her sons had no ties to extremist groups. \"I am ... a hundred percent sure that this is a setup,\" she said. \"My two sons are really innocent.\" Russian media say the parents have stopped giving interviews, and that they are no longer at the address in Dagestan where they had been staying. SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Much has been made of the fact that the suspects in the Boston bombings are ethnic Chechens, with links to the volatile North Caucasus region of Russia. NPR's Corey Flintoff says that Russian reaction to this story appears to be as complex as the region's turbulent history. COREY FLINTOFF, BYLINE: So far, official reaction to this story has been muted. State-run news media show clips of President Vladimir Putin condemning the bombing, and offering condolences to the people of Boston. PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: (Foreign language spoken) FLINTOFF: State media also focus on the follow-up telephone call between Putin and President Obama. That's a significant point, given that relations between Russia and the United States has been at a low point recently as the two nations exchange accusations of human-rights abuses. There's been relatively little attention so far to the story that in 2011 the FBI investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the two brothers accused in the bombing. That investigation came at the request of an unidentified foreign government. It could well have been Russia, which has reason to fear terrorist attacks after a long history of turmoil in the North Caucasus. The Tsarnaev family are ethnic Chechens, with roots in the mountainous part of Southern Russia between the Black and Caspian Seas. But the Tsarnaevs apparently spent little time in the region, a point that was driven home forcefully by Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. PRESIDENT RAMZAN KADYROV: (Foreign language spoken) FLINTOFF: We do now know such people, he says, speaking of the Tsarnaevs. They did not live in Chechnya. He goes on to say that the Tsarnaev brothers grew up in America and therefore, their actions reflect their American upbringing, rather than a Chechen one. Kadyrov is know for flamboyant rhetoric, but he appears to be right in saying that the Tsarnaevs have had little connection to Chechnya, or even to the region. The brothers were reportedly born in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, where the family had lived for decades. The father, Anzor Tsarnaev, apparently tried to bring the family back to Chechnya around 1994, but that was the start of the first Chechen war. There are records that the brothers went to school for about a year in neighboring Dagestan before the family immigrated to the ", "(Most recent update: 4:20 p.m. ET) Investigators are still waiting to interview Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whose wounds reportedly include injuries to his neck and leg. An official tells CNN that Tsarnaev has been \"intubated and sedated,\" rendering him unable to speak with them. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick described Tsarnaev's health Saturday as \"serious but stable ... I think, not able to communicate yet.\" Authorities are developing ideas about the possible motives of the 19-year-old Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamarlan Tsarnaev, the suspect who died after a gunfight with police. Officials also want to know whether the two men acted alone when they allegedly planted bombs near the marathon's finish line. Another question being asked is whether the attacks possibly could have been prevented. As we've reported, the FBI acknowledged Friday that its agents interviewed Tamarlan Tsarnaev in 2011, after being asked by a foreign government to investigate him as a potential risk. The FBI says it was told that he was \"a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States.\" The FBI's inquiry did not uncover any terrorist activities. The FBI did not identify the foreign government in an official statement, but The Associated Press and other news outlets were reporting the request came from Russia, a country Tamarlan Tsarnaev visited several times. The Tsarnevs are ethnic Chechens, \"with links to the volatile North Caucasus region of Russia,\" as NPR's Corey Flintoff reported Saturday. A senior congressional aide tells The Boston Globe that members of Congress are asking law enforcement officials about the FBI's earlier investigation of the elder Tsarnaev brother. \"The FBI had this guy on the radar, and somehow he fell off,\" the aide says. \"We heard for several days leading up to this there was no intelligence. Now we know there could have been intelligence.\" In Boston, the site of the twin attacks is still being processed for evidence. Nearby, mourners and well-wishers have left a pile of flowers, notes and mementos in the days since the attack. An interfaith memorial service is planned for 12:30 p.m. ET Sunday at the intersection of Boylston and Berkeley streets, where the members of six churches are gathering to honor the attack's victims. We'll update this post as news about the attack and the suspects develops today. Update at 4:20 p.m. ET. Boston PD Chief Says Suspects May Have Planned More Violence: The Tsarnaev brothers had enough weaponry to inflict more damage, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis says of the marathon bombing suspects. \"We have reason to believe, based upon the evidence that was found at that scene... the explosive ordnance that was unexploded, and the firepower that they had, that they were going to attack other individuals,\" Davis said on CBS's Face the Nation Sunday. \"That's my belief at this point.\" \"They had IEDs, they had homemade hand-grenades that they were throwing at the officers,\" Davis said. \"The scene was littered with unexploded improvised explosive devices that actually, we had to point out to the arriving officers and clear the area. They were strewn about the area. There was also one found in the motor vehicle that was abandoned, the Mercedes SUV.\" Update at 2:20 p.m. ET. Memorial Draws Hundreds: Hundreds of residents gathered Sunday to pray, to sing and to pay tribute to the three people who died Monday — Martin Richard, 8; Lingzi Lu, 23; Krystle Campbell, 29 — and MIT police Officer Sean Collier, 26, who was slain Thursday, as well as the more than 170 people who were injured. Update at 12:20 p.m. ET. Bomb Suspects Acted Alone, Mayor Says: The suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing acted alone, Boston Mayor Tom Menino says on ABC's This Week. Menino provided no details about the health of suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev other than to say, \"we don't know if we'll ever be able to question the individual.\" When reminded by ABC's George Stephanopoulos that Massachusetts does not have the death penalty as an option, Menino said, \"I hope that the U.S. attorney, Carmen Ortiz, takes him on the federal side and throws the book at him.\" Update at 9 a.m. ET. London Marathon Marked By High Security, Memories Of Boston: The London Marathon observed 30 seconds of silence before the race got underway Sunday, in a show of solidarity with the victims in Monday's Boston Marathon blasts. Many runners wore black ribbons in their honor.", "Did Russia not share enough intelligence with the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the elder Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, or did the FBI fail to connect the dots with information they&#8217;d been given about him by the Russians before the bombing? Today, members of Congress are reviewing the Obama administration&#8217;s main intelligence report on the Boston Marathon bombing. In its reporting, the New York Times concludes that Russia declined to provide the FBI with information from an intercepted telephone conversation Tsarnaev had with his mother in which they discussed Islamic jihad. But in its reporting today, the Boston Globe says the FBI overlooked a key piece of information: that Tsarnaev changed his name before the bombing and Russia had warned the FBI that he might do that as he became more radical. WBUR senior reporter David Boeri joins Here & Now&#8217;s Robin Young to discuss the new information. Guest\n\nDavid Boeri, senior reporter at WBUR. He tweets @davidboeri.\n ROBIN YOUNG, HOST: From NPR and WBUR Boston, I'm Robin Young. JEREMY HOBSON, HOST: I'm Jeremy Hobson. It's HERE AND NOW. And in a few minutes we will go inside a bitcoin mine, which is not a mine at all, it is a datacenter where complicated algorithms are used to unlock the virtual currency. YOUNG: Maybe you'll explain bitcoins to me. (LAUGHTER) HOBSON: Again. YOUNG: But before that, today members of Congress are reviewing the Obama administration's main intelligence report on the Boston Marathon bombings, and two newspapers have two very different angles on the report, the New York Times saying that before the bombing, Russia did not share key information with the FBI about bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. He was the older of the two brothers who were suspected in the bombing. He was eventually killed in a shootout with police days later. Meanwhile the Boston Globe is reporting that the FBI could have better connected the dots it had been given about Tamerlan by Russia. For instance, when Russia warned that Tamerlan Tsarnaev would change his name, he later did, and no red flags went up. David Boeri reports for the HERE AND NOW contributing station WBUR. He joins us here in the studio. And David, very tender topic here in the Boston area as we approach the one-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing. So what do you make of this reporting today? DAVID BOERI: So the question has always been, Robin, what did the FBI know. How much did they know? How responsive were they to it? So these two different stories, one, the New York Times has a story that in fact the Russians had intercepted a phone call between Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the marathon day bomber, and his mother talking about jihad, and that that was not provided to the FBI by Russian security services. So that would seem to be particularly telling here. YOUNG: Especially since as we know that there had been communication between the Russians and officials in the U.S. about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, about his travel to Russia. So there had been - there was an awareness between the countries of this young man. BOERI: And this New York Times story seems to undo, on the face of it, the damage done to the FBI after early reports that the Russians had in fact contacted the FBI and warned them about Tsarnaev early on. And in addition, what we also find out is the FBI was blamed by the Boston police commissioner for not telling the Boston police what they had found out from the Russians. So today's New York Times story seems to undo some of that damage. YOUNG: It exonerates the FBI a bit. BOERI: So now you have the Boston Globe report, based on statements of a local congressman, William Keating, that indicates that the Russians had told the FBI in 2011 that they could expect that Tamerlan Tsarnaev would be trying to change his name. In fact in 2012 he files with the immigration service, and he has a name change. What's telling is we have Tsarnaev wants to change his name to a first name associated with an insurgent who had been killed in the insurgency from Dagestan against Russia and also a historic figure who was known as a great Islamic warrior. Well, consider who Tamerlan was. Tamerlan was the great Mongol conqueror known as the sword of Islam. YOUNG: So he already had a name that was pretty powerful. BOERI: It tells you, it does indicate he is hardening. He is looking for an even more powerful name somehow. So Keating, the congressman from Massachusetts, reveals that in fact the Russians had told the FBI this, and nothing happened. YOUNG: Not only - if I'm reading the Boston Globe report correct, in the form that he was filling out with the name change, there was also a portion where he was asked to pledge his allegiance to the United States, and he doesn't. BOERI: Now, to be fair, Robin, we are walking Tamerlan Tsarnaev backwards. Imagine yourself at the top of a pyramid, and we are now walking him down the pyramid, and every time we come to another junctu", "In a message written on a wall of the boat where he was found hiding, Boston bombings suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev claimed responsibility for the attack and said it was motivated by anger over the Afghan and Iraq wars, sources familiar with what was found have told CBS News correspondent John Miller. CNN has followed CBS News' report with a story of its own: \"The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon attack indicated that the bombing was retribution for what he called U.S. attacks against Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, a law enforcement official said. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev made remarks about the bombing in a makeshift message found in the boat where he was captured in the backyard of a Watertown, Mass., home.\" NPR has not independently confirmed those reports. Click here to see a note about how The Two-Way covers stories such as this. CBS News' Miller, whose law enforcement career before joining the network included a stint as deputy director of the analysis division in the office of the director of national intelligence during President George W. Bush's administration, reports being told: \"[That] the note, scrawled with a pen on the interior wall of the cabin, said the bombings were retribution for what the U.S. did to Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, and called the Boston victims collateral damage in the way Muslims have been in the U.S.-driven wars. When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims, the note added. Dzhokar said he didn't mourn older brother Tamerlan — the other suspect in the bombings — and said Tamerlan was a martyr in paradise by then — and that Dzhokar expected to join him there.\" CNN says its source \"added that Dzhokhar told investigators mainly the same details in a bedside interrogation at a Boston hospital after his capture.\" Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, and his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, are accused of planting two bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The April 15 explosions killed three people and wounded more than 250. They're also accused of killing an MIT police officer on April 18 and of engaging in a gun battle with police the next day. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died from injuries he sustained during that firefight. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured later that day, in the boat that was being stored in the backyard of a Watertown, Mass., family's home. He's been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction. Note: As happens when stories such as this are developing, there will likely be reports that turn out to be mistaken. We will focus on news being reported by NPR, other news outlets with expertise, and statements from authorities who are in a position to know what's going on. And if some of that information turns out to be wrong, we'll update. Take me back to the top of this post.", "Officials in Cambridge, Mass., have urged the family of deceased Boston Marathon bombings suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev not to ask that he be buried in a city-owned cemetery. Meanwhile, at least four private cemeteries in the area have already turned down such a request. From Boston, WBUR's Deborah Becker tells our Newscast Desk that Cambridge City Manager Bob Healy issued a statement over the weekend. In it, as The Boston Globe reports, he says that \"the difficult and stressful efforts of the residents of the City of Cambridge to return to a peaceful life, would be adversely impacted by the turmoil, protests and wide spread media presence at such an interment. The families of loved ones interred in the Cambridge Cemetery also deserve to have their deceased family members rest in peace.\" Cremation is not an option for Tsarnaev's Muslim family. Three people were killed and more than 250 people were wounded April 15 when two bombs exploded near the marathon's finish line. On April 18, authorities say, Tsarnaev and his 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar, were responsible for the shooting death of a MIT police officer on the Cambridge school's campus. In the early hours of April 19, according to investigators, they engaged in a gun battle with police in Watertown, Mass. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died from the gunshot wounds and blunt trauma he sustained during that firefight. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured later that day in Watertown. According to The Associated Press, the funeral director who has been holding Tsarnaev's body says he will now seek help from the commonwealth of Massachusetts. The AP also says that: \"The dilemma over where to bury the 26-year-old suspect comes as a friend of his brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev heads to court Monday for a bail hearing on charges that he lied to federal investigators after the bombings. \"Defense attorneys said in court documents filed Saturday that they will ask a federal judge to release Robel Phillipos of Cambridge from jail. They said he had nothing to do with the deadly bombings and isn't a flight risk. \"Phillipos, 19, was charged last week with lying to investigators about visiting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's college dorm room on April 18, three days after the bombings. Two other friends were charged with conspiring to obstruct justice by taking a backpack with fireworks and a laptop from Tsarnaev's dorm room. All four had studied at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.\"", "As investigators look into the Boston Marathon bombings, one crucial question is whether the suspects, brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, acted alone or had help. The clues might be found in the bombs used. From what is now known, it appears the brothers assembled a whole arsenal of explosives. Watertown Police Chief Edward Deveau told CNN last weekend that the suspects had at least six bombs, including the two used in the attack and one thrown at police during a shootout. There were three bombs that weren't detonated, including one found at the Tsarnaevs' apartment in Cambridge. Evidently they had a whole bomb-making operation somewhere. Could a couple of young men, described by an uncle as \"losers,\" really have done this all on their own, without training or instruction or financial support? Michael Bouchard, a former special agent at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, says these kinds of homemade explosives turn up all the time. \"It's amazing the number of bombs that law enforcement comes across every day in the United States,\" he says. \"A lot of them are just young individuals, too much time on their hands obviously, who go on the Internet and experiment with this kind of thing. Hopefully they just get caught and they don't wind up getting injured.\" Easy-To-Find Instructions Bouchard, who retired as an assistant director at the ATF, says there are hundreds of websites that explain how to build a rudimentary bomb. First you need your explosive. You can make your own mixture or you can buy ready-made explosives off the shelf. \"Things that are used in fireworks — black powder and smokeless powder are [also] used in loading ammunition,\" he says. \"You can go to gun stores ... Wal-Mart, any of these kind of places that sell those things. It's sold for sporting purposes, [but] you can then use it for bomb making if you choose.\" Next, you need a way to light it. The charging document released by federal authorities on Monday said the bombs used at the marathon had a \"hobby fuse.\" Normally, hobby fuses have to be lit with a match. If, however, there's a wire attached to the match, the bomber can light it with a little switch. The authorities have yet to explain how the bombs in Boston were actually lit. Finally, there's the container. The Boston bombers used pressure cookers, but Bouchard says it could be anything that holds the explosive in a confined place. \"If you ignite it, it will just burn,\" he says, \"so what you need to do is put it in a container so that as it ignites, it burns, the hot gases build up [and] they can't go anywhere.\" That buildup is what makes the device explode. That's all there is to it, and this information is readily available. Encouraging Other Attacks? There seems to be widespread agreement in the law enforcement and intelligence world that the Boston bombers could easily have carried out the operation without help from outside. \"Terrorism has become an option in a way that it wasn't before,\" says Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism research fellow at the New America Foundation. \"So when you look at an attack like this one ... what you worry is that other people that might be inclined to this kind of thing, but thought it was too hard to do, may be willing to go out and experiment.\" Leaders of terrorist movements like al-Qaida have urged their followers to carry out attacks on their own, in their own communities, against targets of their own choosing. What isn't yet known is whether the Boston bombing fits into that pattern. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: Now a closer look at some evidence in the Boston bombing case. Initial reports from investigators suggest the Tsarnaev brothers acted alone, but it's still an open question whether they were the sole architects of the plot or whether they had help. Clues might be found in the bombs themselves. As we hear from NPR's Tom Gjelten, investigators want to learn whether the brothers could have built the bombs on their own or only with guidance from others. TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: From what is now known, it appears the brothers assembled a whole arsenal of explosives. Here's Watertown Police Chief Edward Deveau telling CNN last weekend what the suspects threw when they encountered the police Friday morning. EDWARD DEVEAU: There's the three bombs that exploded, there's the two that weren't detonated, and in the car that he bailed out of I know there was at least one other explosive device in that car that they didn't use. So there was at least six bombs they had, if you will. GJELTEN: Plus, the police found an explosive device in the Tsarnaev apartment in Cambridge. Evidently they had a whole bomb-making operation somewhere. So the question, could a couple of young men, whom their uncle considered losers, really have done this all on their own, without training or instruction or financial support? MICHAEL BOUCHARD: Happens every day. GJELTEN: Michael Bouchard is a former special agent at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms", "The opportunistic political sentiment of never letting a crisis go to waste (see: Rahm Emanuel, among others) has been reframed since the Boston bombings by those seizing on the attack as certain evidence of their positions. In the Los Angeles Times recently, columnist Doyle McManus referred to the attack as akin to a \"national Rorschach test\" that has provided — especially before the suspects were identified — something for everyone. From those who fear Muslims and those who suspected anti-tax extremists to immigration overhaul supporters and opponents, from media and birth-order experts to truthers and conspiracy theorists, the event provided fodder for a spectrum of favored narratives. Which has caused national security experts like James Carafano of the conservative Heritage Foundation to bristle. \"Clearly, on almost every aspect of this, all the facts aren't in,\" says Carafano, whose recent book is Wiki at War: Conflict in a Socially Networked World. \"To draw broad public policy conclusions based on this when we don't have all the facts is not the best way to serve the public interest.\" Carafano, who says he has significant issues with the immigration overhaul proposal that is the subject of Capitol Hill hearings this week, has warned against hanging an immigration narrative on the events in Boston, no matter which side of the issue you're on. \"It's difficult to make law by anecdote,\" he said. \"It's difficult to use one case to make a trend, or to use one case to create a trend.\" \"These guys,\" he said, referring to bombing suspects Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, who died in a shootout with police, \"can represent many different things.\" \"We don't need a crisis to tell us what's good and bad about our system — it's like judging a baseball season in one pitch,\" Carafano said. \"This isn't a wake-up call on anything. I've been in this business 10 years and I haven't heard one issue raised in the last week that I haven't heard a thousand times.\" We thought, however, it would be interesting to take a quick look at just what's been out there since the attack, how interest groups and partisans have attempted to use the Boston bombings to further a cause or make a political point. Here's just a flavor of what has unfolded: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says we need to revisit what we expect from the Constitution \"The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry,\" Bloomberg said during a press conference. \"But we live in a complex world where you're going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.\" Forbes columnist says Boston means Russia's Putin wins, raises questions about Obama's \"war on terror\" \"Boston extremism should plague Barack Obama throughout his second term as it raises legitimate question about his handling of the war on terror. It will help Vladimir Putin remove the last vestiges of democracy and free press from his totalitarian Russia without a peep from the U.S.\" Commentators, Pat Robertson blame Muslims for attack, warn of menace Fox News guest commentator Erik Rush tweeted, then deleted, \"Let's kill them.\" And on his 700 Club program, Robertson disputed with a \"no way\" the notion of Islam as a \"religion of peace.\" The Republican National Committee says the Democratic National Committee politicized the bombing's aftermath. Each group calls the other \"disgraceful\" The RNC criticized the DNC for requiring email addresses and ZIP codes for visitors to its website who use a feature to send a letter of thanks to Boston first responders. The RNC called it a political ploy to fatten fundraising lists; the DNC said it isn't using the email data for fundraising and accused the RNC of politicizing expressions of support. The Sequester, Post-Boston House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., was one of the first to use Boston as evidence of the importance of investing in \"both domestic and international security\" and not pursuing an \"irrational policy of cutting the highest priorities and the lowest priorities by essentially the same percentage.\" Immigration, of course Carafano, of Heritage, notes that the Tsarnaev brothers \"didn't sneak across the border to get into the United States, nor were they here illegally,\" and he has written that people are falling into an \"emotional trap\" to advance their political agendas. And we've seen arguments to both speed up and slow down the legislative process surrounding consideration of the immigration overhaul proposal. Guns, Post-Boston, according to Fox Fox News featured a story about \"confused\" celebrities pushing for gun control. Guns, Post-Boston, according to New Yorker editor David Remnick On PBS's Charlie Rose, Remnick asked where the suspects got their weapons, suggestiong that attack might have been \"a hell of a lot more difficult to pull off with effective gun control.\" Republican House Spea", "(Most recent update: 7:00 p.m. ET.) The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings was charged Monday with using a weapon of mass destruction to kill three people and wound more than 200 in what FBI investigators said evidence shows was a coldly calculated attack. With chilling detail, the criminal complaint filed against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev says he was seen on video placing a bag near the the finish line of the marathon, watching and reacting with no surprise as the first explosion went off down the street, and then \"calmly but rapidly\" walking away before the second blast occurred at the spot where moments before he had been standing. (Scroll down to see more from the complaint or to read a complete copy of it.) The FBI's description of that scene came just before people in Boston and across Massachusetts were to pause for a moment of silence at 2:50 p.m. ET Monday — marking the time exactly one week ago when the first of the two bombs exploded. The criminal complaint filed against Tsarnaev also included a new detail: Previously, officials had said 170 to 180 people were injured in the blasts. In the complaint, they increased that to \"over 200.\" Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was arraigned at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, where he remains in serious condition. As NPR's David Schaper reported on Morning Edition, it's not clear yet how or when Tsarnaev was wounded or who inflicted some of his injuries. It's possible he tried to kill himself. Sources familiar with the investigation into the bombings have told NPR that wounds to his neck and jaw area are preventing Tsarnaev from talking. According to a transcript of today's initial appearance before United States Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler, Tsarnaev said one word — \"No\" — when he was asked if he could afford a lawyer. At the end of the hearing — where Tsarnaev was given his Miranda warning — Bowler said she found \"the defendant is alert, mentally competent, and lucid. He is aware of the nature of the proceedings.\" Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Dzhokhar's 26-year-old brother and the other suspect in the bombings, died after a gun battle with police early Friday in the Boston suburb of Watertown, Mass. The brothers allegedly killed an MIT campus police officer and seriously wounded a Boston transit police officer during a wild shooting spree that began Thursday night and lasted into the early hours of Friday. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured Friday evening after a harrowing day when much of the Boston area was locked down during the police manhunt. He was discovered in a boat stored in a Watertown family's backyard. Authorities are anxious to know whether anyone else may have been involved and whether any more attacks were planned. Investigators also are trying to piece together how Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have been radicalized in recent years, NPR's Temple-Raston added Monday. They're looking to interview his wife. The Tsarnaev brothers, both Muslims, came from an ethnic Chechen family that had been living in the U.S. for about a decade. Tamerlan was a legal resident, and Dzhokhar became a U.S. citizen last year. We'll keep an eye on developments as the day continues and update this post with the news. Update at 8:02 p.m. ET. Feds Hand Off Boylston Street: In a move that also had a lot of symbolic significance, federal officers handed custody of Boylston Street back to Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. The Boston Police Department tweeted a picture of the moment a little bit ago. CBS Boston reports that this means the city has begun a 5-step plan to reopen the scene of the bombings to the general public. The station reports: \"The 5-steps include testing the area for contamination, structural building assessments, removing debris, internal building assessments and re-entry including communication and counseling.\" Update at 6:31 p.m. ET. Tsarnaev Mirandized: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was read the Miranda warning today during his initial appearance before United States Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler. A transcript of the proceeding was filed at the United States District Court District of Massachusetts and the document was posted online by The New York Times. Bowler tells Tsarnaev that he has the right to remain silent and not say anything that will incriminate him. She also asks Tsarnaev if he can afford a lawyer and Tsarnaev appears to answer \"no.\" Perhaps most importantly, the judge says, \"At this time, at the conclusion of the initial appearance, I find that the defendant is alert, mentally competent, and lucid. He is aware of the nature of the proceedings.\" William Fick, the federal defender representing Tsarnaev, also agreed to a voluntary detention of the suspect. Update at 2:53 p.m. ET. A Moment Of Silence: For about seven minutes beginning at 2:50 p.m. ET., the city of Boston fell silent. Investigators formed a semi-circle around the the site of one the blasts and bowed their heads. The New York Stock Exchange, the House of Representatives in Washington and th", "When Boston Marathon bombings suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev arrived at the city's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center on April 19 he had \"multiple gunshot wounds, the most severe of which appears to have entered through the left side inside of his mouth and exited the left face,\" the doctor who treated Tsarnaev testified in court three days later. Dr. Stephen Odom, a trauma surgeon, was not asked his opinion about whether Tsarnaev may have fired that shot himself, a court document indicates. Our colleagues at WGBH have posted a transcript of Odom's testimony, which was released Monday. We'll embed a copy in this post as well. Odom said the shot to the face \"was a high-powered injury\" that also caused a skull fracture. Tsarnaev, authorities say, used a Ruger P95 9mm semiautomatic handgun during a crime spree across the Boston area the week of April 15. Tsarnaev's other injuries included \"multiple gunshots [sic] wounds to the extremities\" and broken bones in his left hand, Odom testified. Tsarnaev, now 20, and his 26-year-old brother Tamerlan, are the lone suspects in the April 15 twin bombings that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. They're also the lone suspects in the murder of a MIT police officer three days later. Native Chechens (Dzhokhar had become a U.S. citizen and Tamerlan was a legal resident), the brothers may have become radical Islamists. According to some news reports, in a message written on the wall of the boat where he was found hiding, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev claimed responsibility for the attack and said it was motivated by anger over the Afghan and Iraq wars. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died from injuries he received during a gun battle with police in Watertown, Mass., late on April 18. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured in Watertown on the evening of the 19th. He had been hiding in a boat stored in a backyard. Among the charges in a 30-count indictment of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: that he used weapons of mass destruction — the bombs — to intentionally kill Martin Richard, 8, of Dorchester, Mass., Krystle Campbell, 29, of Medford, Mass., and Lu Lingzi, 23, of China, a student at Boston University. Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty. The Testimony Return to the top of this post.", "Roxanne and Dennis Simmonds knew their son as fearless and strong from the day he was born. \"D.J. came out with shoulders of a linebacker,\" Roxanne says. \"He was the first baby I saw that had muscles.\" \"He wasn't really afraid of anything,\" Dennis says. At night, young D.J. would take the dog with him and circle the entire house, to \"make sure there's nobody on the grounds,\" Dennis says, laughing. \"I used to say, 'D.J. where you going? It's late.' He would say 'I'm doing a perimeter search, Dad.' \" So when D.J. told his parents he was entering the police force, they were hardly surprised. But after his work brought him to the front lines of the horrific events that surrounded the Boston Marathon bombing, the son who returned home wasn't quite the same. Four days into a manhunt for the suspects, in the early morning hours of April 19, 2013, police confronted the bombers on a suburban street in nearby Watertown. Among them was Boston Police officer D.J. Simmonds. \"You know, with the kids,\" Roxanne says, \"I have this thing that I have to talk to them every day. But after the bombing, he called me and he said, 'Ma. I'm not going to be able to talk to you all the time right now.' \" The confrontation eventually led to a shootout between the bombers and police. \"D.J. and his partners were able to corner the brothers,\" Roxanne says. \"And they were some of the first ones on scene.\" Roxanne and Dennis recall seeing a clip of the showdown on TV — that's when they recognized their son's voice. \"It instantly sent chills up to my back,\" Dennis says. A homemade bomb thrown by one of the Tsarnaev brothers detonated near D.J., knocking him off his feet. \"We knew he had a concussion, but he said he was fine,\" Roxanne says. \"But, we knew something was a little different.\" \"Yeah, he was quiet,\" Dennis says. \"He'd said when he closed his eyes he would see the bombs,\" Roxanne says. \"I will never forget the day he came downstairs. I was in my bedroom and he stood at the door and said, 'I'm afraid of the dark.' I didn't know what to say. His eyes looked like — he was like a kid again. That was the only vulnerability that D.J. ever showed.\" \"He died a year later,\" she says. Their son had suffered a brain aneurysm. D.J.'s death, in April 2014, was linked to head injuries he sustained when an explosive thrown by one of the Tsarnaev brothers detonated near him. \"He used to [lie] on my lap and I used to rub his head,\" Roxanne says. \"I miss that. I miss dialing his phone number. I miss dialing that every day. I've loved him since the moment I saw him as a little baby linebacker and I love him more and more every day.\" Audio produced for Morning Edition by Liyna Anwar and Jasmyn Belcher Morris. StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps.org.", "Meb Keflezighi ran his final career marathon in New York City in 2017. It was his 26th, which lends itself to the title of his new book, written with Scott Douglas: &#8220;26 Marathons: What I&#8217;ve Learned About Faith, Identity, Running, and Life from My Marathon Career.&#8221; That career started &#8212; and nearly ended &#8212; with how bad Keflezighi felt after his very first 26.2-mile race. &#8220;In 2002, my first marathon in New York, I thought I was going to have a chance at winning it,&#8221; Keflezighi says. &#8220;I went for it, and I got down to four people, and then eventually I hit the wall [at] about 18, 19 miles, and got slower and slower. It was torture getting to that finish line: &#8216;This is the worst thing ever. This is my first and last marathon. I never want to do this again.&#8217; &#8221; Keflezighi was born in Eritrea, but he and his family fled the African country due to civil war. Eventually, they settled in San Diego. He became a U.S. citizen, was a running star at UCLA and made the Olympic team for the first time in 2000. After that disappointing experience in New York City in 2002, Keflezighi went back to Eritrea for the first time since his family had left &#8212; and found new perspective. &#8220;I saw how people are surviving day in, day out, through the sunrise, sunset, all the work they need to do: climbing trees to get leaves from the trees, or going to the well to get water [and] carry it to their villages,&#8221; he says. &#8220;And I said, &#8216;You know what? That 40-minute, 50-minute discomfort that I went [through] in the marathon &#8212; nobody told me to do a marathon, it was a personal choice. So I decided to say, &#8216;You know what? I guess the pain wasn&#8217;t that bad. So I need to go back.&#8217; &#8220;I kind of realized I took for granted what I am able to do,&#8221; he says. &#8220;And I kept going.&#8221; Keflezighi won his Olympic medal in 2004, finishing second in Athens in the marathon. Then came more marathons in Boston and London. But Keflezighi struggled with injuries before he finally had his breakthrough, coming full circle and winning the 2009 New York City Marathon, where his career had started. &#8220;It was a dream come true,&#8221; he says. &#8220;That&#8217;s the marathon that I wanted to win, that was my first win. I thought I could do it, I didn&#8217;t, I got second place, third place, and after about a year and a half of physical therapy &#8212; nothing in a marathon is guaranteed, nothing in life is guaranteed. But if you work hard and do the best that you can, my dream became a reality.&#8221; He made the Olympic team again in 2012, but just missed a medal in the London marathon, finishing fourth. A year later, Keflezighi was injured again. But he was in Boston when two bombs exploded near the finish line, killing three people and injuring more than 260 others. That night, he told a reporter he wanted to come back to win the marathon for the people of Boston in 2014. And that&#8217;s exactly what he did. Watch on YouTube. Before the race got underway, Keflezighi scribbled the names of the bombing victims on his bib number. Then he ran away from a world-class field to become the first American man to win the Boston Marathon in 31 years. &#8220;People were excited &#8230; chanting, &#8216;U-S-A, U-S-A.&#8217; I got inspired, I&#8217;m like, &#8216;U-S-A, U-S-A&#8217; with them. [Getting] to be able to pull [off] the victory, not only for myself or for the families, and for the city of the international community of running, I felt blessed that God gave me that chance,&#8221; Keflezighi says. &#8220;It&#8217;s not for lack of trying in the past. But there was a greater purpose on that day. It was just an honor and privilege to be able to pull the victory [off] for all of us.&#8221; Keflezighi says people are still approaching him to tell him their stories of watching that 2014 race. &#8220;You make appearances, and [people say], &#8216;I was at work and I was screaming at the computer, and more people came to watch with me and then they saw your victory,&#8217; &#8221; he says. &#8220;It kind of connected people &#8230; whether it&#8217;s runners or nonrunners.&#8221; After 2014 in Boston, Keflezighi kept running. He made his fourth and final Olympic team in 2016 and finished 33rd in the marathon in Rio. He struggled to finish that race, stopping almost every mile in the later stages. But he writes that runners from Peru, South Africa and other countries encouraged him to keep going as they passed him. It felt, he says, like they were giving him a global victory lap. He ran Boston one more time in 2017, and then later that year wrapped it all up in New York. Keflezighi is retired now. But he&#8217;s still running, and says he&#8217;s always going to be one of the sport&#8217;s biggest cheerleaders. &#8220;A marathon is a metaphor for life, and life is not easy. A marathon&#8217;s not easy,&#8221; he says. &#8220;But through hard", "Ibragim Todashev, the 27-year-old man shot and killed after he allegedly attacked an FBI agent Wednesday in Orlando, may have been involved with Boston bombings suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a 2011 triple murder. As NPR's Dina Temple-Raston reported on All Things Considered, \"it's still under investigation, but law enforcement authorities told us that this young man had been interviewed extensively\" about the September 2011 killings of three men in Waltham, Mass., as well as his friendship with Tsarnaev. As we've previously reported, one of the three victims in the 2011 killings had been a friend of Tsarnaev's. Friends of that man, Brendan Mess, became suspicious about Tsarnaev's possible involvement in the killings after the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings. Investigators theorize that the 2011 murders may have followed an attempt to rob the three victims of money they allegedly earned by selling drugs. Tsarnaev, who died after a gun battle with police on April 19, and his younger brother Dzhokhar are accused of planting the bombs in Boston that killed three people and wounded more than 250. During an interview with the FBI and state police early Wednesday in Orlando, law enforcement officials tell Dina, Todashev \"appeared ready to sign a confession\" about the 2011 murders. But then, her sources say, he \"pulled a knife on an FBI agent and two state troopers who were there, and they responded by shooting him dead.\" The New York Times is reporting it has been told by two senior law enforcement officials that Todashev had \"implicated himself and Mr. Tsarnaev\" in the triple murder. Todashev, friends say, was a mixed martial arts fighter. Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been a boxer. The two friends were also both ethnic Chechens. It's not certain how recently they had been in contact. Friends tell The Orlando Sentinel that they can't believe Todashev had any involvement in either extremist activity or the triple murder. Does any of this tie Todashev to the bombings? \"Right now, everything points to the Tsarnaev brothers having [carried out the attack] on their own,\" Dina said on All Things Considered. Investigators think that \"maybe there were some local people, friends of theirs, who knew what they were planning — but [that] this wasn't some grand plot. At least that's where the evidence is taking officials now.\" From WBUR's Deborah Becker: \"Todashev came to America from Russia several years ago to study on a J-1 visa, In 2008, he was granted asylum and obtained a green card in February 2013. It appears he lived in both Cambridge and Allston [Mass.] for a time. And we know that he received a Florida drivers license about a year ago.\" Update at 4:15 p.m. ET. Todashev's Father Says He Will Travel to U.S. Reuters quotes Abdulbaki Todashev, the father of the dead suspect, as saying he plans to travel to the United States, where he thinks his son was tortured. \"I suspect that they tortured my son and that he suffered a painful death,\" said Abdulbaki Todashev, who was interviewed at his home in Chechnya, the news agency said. \"I will try to go to (the United States) and get to the truth,\" he said, according to Reuters.", "What did news media get wrong while covering the Boston Marathon and what lessons does that crisis offer for future live breaking news coverage? Here & Now&#8217;s Jeremy Hobson discusses those questions with Deborah Becker, senior correspondent and host at WBUR, and Scott Helman, reporter and editor at the Boston Globe. Interview Highlights On how to know what information to trust in a breaking news situation Scott Helman: &#8220;I think it’s very difficult, I will add that in full disclosure I think the Globe was one of the news outlets that had information about that allegedly arrest as well. And I know we put it out there briefly. So I mean I think everybody in general performed very well in those chaotic days and hours after the bombing. But there was a lot of things that people got wrong. And you know, it’s so difficult because in that situation people turn to these trusted news sources because they were so panicked, that feeling of anxiety because we didn&#8217;t know at that point, was there one bomber, two bombers, were there 10? We had no idea that the extent of it and I think having to be that sort of voice of reason but also get that information out to people very quickly is so difficult.&#8221; Deborah Becker: &#8220;I was actually at the Weston Hotel that day and so the officials there were supposed to hold a press conference but kept pushing it back. And they said we’re having a press conference at 1, nope it’s gonna be at 2, nope its gonna be at 2:30, nope, and they just kept pushing it back. And there were planes surrounding the federal court house, there were boats coming in, everybody thought that there was an arrest and someone was going to be brought into the federal courthouse and be charged with the bombings. So it was just wild speculation. I think the big lesson from that is, you know, watch how fear can sort of fuel all of these things, and anxiety. And there was a little snip-it of a report here, and a little snip-it of a report there and you can’t necessarily put those threads together and make a narrative. On whether media outlets need to change their crisis reporting policies Scott Helman: &#8220;I think there’s more awareness about this than there is in years past, in part because some of the disastrous election nights that we&#8217;ve had. I think you&#8217;ve seen this tremendous rush, everybody wants to be the first one to say he won Florida or he didn&#8217;t Florida or whatever. And so I do think there’s a little more consciousness about this. But still, I don’t know in some sense if it&#8217;s totally fixable because there&#8217;s always going to be that desire to be first and to be that one that everyone turns to and then we kind of lionize those news outlets and those reporters who do get it right afterward, and we say &#8216;Deb Becker was the first one to report that.&#8217; So I don’t know if it is totally something that can be repaired completely.&#8221; Deborah Becker: &#8220;Right, but I do have to say, I just did a story about preparedness and how folks are preparing for this year&#8217;s marathon, and I&#8217;m surprised at these preparedness plans for crises. And we really don’t have them, quite honestly, and I think it’s a good idea to sort of tell journalists, look, you know, this is a checklist of what might be beneficial, and these are the lessons that we did learn from the marathon bombings, of what we should do and how we should verify, who we should trust.&#8221; Guests\n\nDeborah Becker, senior correspondent and host at WBUR. She tweets @wburdebbecker.\nScott Helman, reporter and editor at the Boston Globe, and co-author of &#8221;Long Mile Home: Boston Under Attack, the City&#8217;s Courageous Recovery, and the Epic Hunt for Justice.&#8221; He tweets @swhelman.\n JEREMY HOBSON, HOST: Well, tomorrow will mark one year since two pressure-cooker bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Three people were killed; more than 200 were injured. Investigators say the bombings were carried out with two brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The older brother, Tamerlan, died after a gun battle with police. Twenty-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev faces a federal murder trial with the possibility of the death penalty. Now, a lot of the details are clear now that the dust has settled. But on the day the bombings happened and in the days that followed, there was a lot of confusion. Here is then-Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis facing a series of questions from reporters. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED PRESS CONFERENCE) HOBSON: Well, joining us now to talk about the media coverage of the bombings and what lessons we should learn for future crises are two people who covered the bombings as they happened: Deborah Becker, senior correspondent and host at WBUR in Boston. Deb, welcome. DEBORAH BECKER, BYLINE: Thank you. HOBSON: And Boston Globe reporter and editor Scott Helman. And he's co-author of \"Long Mile Home.\" Scott, welcome. SCOTT HELMAN: It's great to be ", "(Most recent update: 5:10 p.m. ET) With the capture Friday night of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old surviving suspect in the bombings at the Boston Marathon, the story moves into a new phase — one of trying to answer critical questions. -- Why? -- How? -- Was anyone else involved? Authorities hope to get many answers from Tsarnaev himself. As NPR's Dina Temple-Raston said on All Things Considered, with the death earlier Friday of the suspect's 26-year-old brother and alleged accomplice, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, investigators hope Dzhokhar will tell them \"if there are other people involved [and] if perhaps there are other bombs elsewhere.\" Tsarnaev remained in a Boston-area hospital Saturday. Authorities say he had multiple injuries, including gunshot wounds to his neck and leg. Speaking at Fenway Park Saturday, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick answered questions about Tsarnaev's health by saying it is \"serious but stable... I think, not able to communicate yet.\" Tsarnaev was involved in two gun battles Friday. An MIT University campus officer was killed late Thursday, and another police officer was wounded during a manhunt that had Watertown, Mass., and much of the Boston metropolitan area under lockdown most of Friday. The shooting of the officers followed the heavy toll from the marathon bombings — three dead and more than 170 people wounded. As NPR's Carrie Johnson reported Friday night, a Department of Justice official tells her that Tsarnaev will not be read his Miranda rights for now. \"We plan to invoke the public safety exception to Miranda in order to question the suspect extensively about other potential explosive devices or accomplices and to gain critical intelligence,\" the official said. There are reports that at least three people who lived in New Bedford, Mass., near where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev attended college, are being questioned. Authorities also detained at least one man in the early hours of Friday as they searched for Tsarnaev. We'll be following the news. Come back to this post for the latest developments, and look for related news in other posts throughout the day. (Check this note for how we cover stories on days like this.) Update at 5:10 p.m. ET. Suspect In 'Serious But Stable' Condition; Sports Teams Try To Give Boston A Lift: Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick describes Tsarnaev's health Saturday as \"serious but stable... I think, not able to communicate yet.\" The Boston Globe's headline today is \"Let The Healing Begin.\" The city's sports teams tried to help, with the Bruins wearing police caps before their game, and the Celtics wearing yellow warm-up jerseys that will be auctioned to raise money for bombing victims. And after the Red Sox held a commemorative ceremony, the team mounted a comeback win that roused the crowd. The Sox' David Ortiz also won applause with his remarks, as he told the audience, \"This is our (expletive) city, and nobody is going to dictate our freedom. Stay strong.\" Update at 2:20 p.m. ET. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's Injuries, And Possible Charges: When he was apprehended in a residential area, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was suffering from gunshot wounds to his neck and leg, says CBS correspondent John Miller, who reports that \"this is a guy who was very weak at this point and probably — had he not been discovered — he might not have lived.\" The suspect remains in serious condition, as of the latest FBI update. If he survives, Tsarnaev may face state murder charges as well as federal terrorism charges, CNN reports, citing a Justice Department source. Update at 10:50 a.m. ET. Work At Crime Scenes May Be Slowed By Weather: One of her law enforcement sources tells NPR's Carrie Johnson that investigators have much work to do today at the various crime scenes in Watertown, Cambridge and Boston. They also caution that the work may be slowed by weather in the area. There's rain in today's forecast. Update at 9:40 a.m. ET. FBI's 2011 Interview Of Tamerlan Tsarnaev Likely To Raise Questions: There was word Friday night, as we reported, that in 2011 the FBI interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev at the request of an unidentified foreign government. As NPR's Corey Flintoff reports on Weekend Edition Saturday, that \"could well have been Russia, which has reason to fear terrorist attacks after a long history of turmoil in the North Caucasus.\" The Tsarnaev family's ethnic roots trace back to Chechnya.\" Late Friday, the FBI released a statement that says, in part: \"The FBI reviewed its records and determined that in early 2011, a foreign government asked the FBI for information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The request stated that it was based on information that he was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country's region to join unspecified underground groups. \"In response to this 2011 request, the FBI checked U.S. government databases and other information to look for such things as der", "The search begins Monday for the jurors who will decide the fate of the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. It was the deadliest act of terrorism in the U.S. since the Sept. 11 attacks, and the trial is one that many have been waiting for. A couple of dozen survivors are expected in court for at least part of the trial — including Heather Abbott, who lost a leg in the attack. She's hoping for answers to both why and how the bombing was carried out. \"Things like how did the bomb arrive? Was it on the T? Did they drive it in a car? That may not mean a lot to other people, but my leg is gone, and I think a lot about all of the details,\" Abbott says. Three bystanders and one police officer were killed in the blast and the aftermath, and hundreds were injured. Prosecutors have said the city of Boston itself was a victim of the bombing. That's why the defense wanted the trial moved somewhere else. Former federal judge Nancy Gertner says it is going to be extremely difficult to find impartial jurors given how many people were personally affected by the blast in 2013. \"Anyone on the finish line, anyone who had anybody running in the race, anyone who was locked down while Tsarnaev was being apprehended, who was told to stay in their house because a dangerous criminal was outside — all people in that category are people who felt vulnerable to the crime,\" Gertner says. \"There are categories that we would never in the ordinary case say should sit on a jury.\" Jury selection is expected to take several weeks. After that, the trial may well feel like the easy part. Prosecutors have amassed reams of evidence against Tsarnaev — from bomb-making materials, and online instructions he allegedly used, to the note he allegedly scribbled in the boat where he was hiding, suggesting the attack was meant as retaliation for Muslims killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is also video from the scene that U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz says further corroborates the case against Tsarnaev. \"Dzhokhar Tsarnaev placed a backpack containing a kind of IED [roadside bomb] among a crowd of marathon spectators including dozens of men, women and children,\" Ortiz says. \"This case is not about guilt,\" says Northeastern University law professor Daniel Medwed. \"In my mind, this case is really about whether or not he's going to get the death penalty.\" Medwed says defense attorneys appear to be building a case that Tsarnaev's life should be spared because he was acting, in a way, under duress — terrified of his older brother and alleged co-conspirator, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Medwed says the sentencing phase may be the longer and newsier part of the trial. \"We're going to learn a lot about Dzhokhar's background, about his beliefs, about his upbringing, about his relationship with his brother,\" Medwed says. \"We're going to learn more about Tamerlan than we've ever learned before.\" But that focus on the suspects is one reason some are still holding out hope for a plea bargain. Former judge Nancy Gertner says an 11th-hour deal could spare everyone the expense and trauma of trial. Prosecutors could present their evidence more quickly, and the sentencing phase would be focused primarily on victims. Gertner points to Jared Loughner, who killed six and wounded former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords; shoe-bomber Richard Reid and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski; who all pleaded guilty in exchange for life in prison. A death sentence brings years of appeals, but a plea deal, she says, would offer more closure. \"The case is over. Tsarnaev is no longer in the press. The newspapers are not recounting countless appeals. It's over, and we don't hear of them anymore,\" Gertner says. It's unknown if either prosecutors or Tsarnaev might be open to the idea. The most we've heard from the defendant, so far, is that he thinks his lawyers are doing a very good job on his behalf. STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Today, a Boston court begins jury selection for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He is the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing. The trial goes forward after a federal appeals court rejected an emergency bid to have it delayed or moved. Now a suspect, who was under 20 at the time of the bombing, could face the death penalty for 30 counts of murder and terrorism. NPR's Tovia Smith reports. TOVIA SMITH, BYLINE: It was the deadliest act of terrorism in the U.S. since 9/11, and the trial is one that many have been waiting for. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Back up a little bit. Give him a little space. SMITH: Police could barely contain the horde of reporters who descended on court for a pre-trial hearing last month, swarming the marathon survivors who came to watch. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: You want to step to the microphone? UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: You have to make room for people to pass through. SMITH: A couple dozen survivors are expected in court for at least part of the trial, including Heather Abbott who lost a leg in the attack. She's hoping for answers to both why and how. HEATHER ", "Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, will appear in court in Boston on Wednesday afternoon to be arraigned on 30 federal charges in connection with the April 15th bombings at the Boston Marathon. He&#8217;s charged with using a weapon of mass destruction in the attack that killed three people and wounded more than 260. Tsarnaev is also accused of killing an MIT police officer on April 19th. Seventeen of the charges could result in the death penalty if Tsarnaev is convicted. Victims and victims&#8217; family members are expected to be in the courtroom. Tsarnaev is accused of carrying out the attack with his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a confrontation with police on April 19, hours before Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was discovered hiding out inside a boat in a backyard in Watertown, Mass. \nSee also: How The Case Against Dzokhar Tsarnaev Might Proceed\nHere & Now&#8217;s full coverage of the marathon bombings\n Federal indictment against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev:\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\nGuest:\n\nDeborah Becker, reporter for WBUR in Boston. She tweets @wburdebbecker.\nAlan Dershowitz, author and professor at Harvard Law School. He tweets@AlanDersh.\n JEREMY HOBSON, HOST: From NPR and WBUR Boston, I'm Jeremy Hobson. ROBIN YOUNG, HOST: I'm Robin Young. It's HERE AND NOW. And we start today with a highly anticipated first court appearance of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The 19-year-old is being arraigned today in federal court in Boston. In a moment we'll speak with defense attorney Alan Dershowitz about the case. HOBSON: Tsarnaev faces 30 federal criminal charges, including using a weapon of mass destruction in those bombings back on April 15th. Three people were killed, more than 260 wounded. Tsarnaev is also charged with the murder of an MIT police officer three days after the bombings, when he and his brother Tamerlan allegedly tried to steal the officer's weapon. Tamerlan was later killed in a violent encounter with police that night. Deborah Becker from WBUR is at the courthouse. And Deb, first just tell us, what's the scene like there? DEBORAH BECKER: Well, the scene, as you can imagine, is chaotic, a lot of media more than anything else here right now, and I'm talking media from Russia, France, all over the world here waiting to get into this arraignment. Folks are waiting in line. It's a first-come, first-served, so it's - a lot of folks are really eager to get in. And not only that, the courtroom where this arraignment is being held is next door to the courtroom where the trial is going on of accused mobster James \"Whitey\" Bulger. So you have both of these things happening right next to each other. So it is chaotic. There are a lot of federal Homeland Security out front. There are Jersey barriers erected, and there's also a lot of security. HOBSON: What about the victims of the bombing? Will there be any room for them in the courtroom? Will any of them be going? BECKER: Some of them say that they will be going. Some said they hadn't decided yet if they would be in the courtroom today. The U.S. attorney's office says that it notified all victims about today's arraignment, but it does not know an exact number of how many may show up today. It does say that it set aside about half of the 110 seats in the courtroom just for victims and victims' family members. And if need be there's a private overflow room for victims. There's also room in the courtroom for the defendant's family today. We are not sure if any members of the Tsarnaev family will be there. And there is room set aside for law enforcement officers, as well. Apparently they are also coming to show support for the police officer killed and the other police officer injured in this. HOBSON: And we've been reaching out here at HERE AND NOW to some of the victims of the bombing, and some of them don't even want to go today. So there may be more room than they need for victims to be there at the arraignment. But Deb, what about security? How is that being dealt with? I know that it's a federal courthouse, there's always going to be tight security but maybe more so today. BECKER: Security is very tight, as I mentioned. I just saw about a dozen Boston police officers and federal protection officers sort of sweep the courtroom. And they also have to be careful because it is open to the public, as well. I talked with one young woman who said that she came down to see the \"Whitey\" Bulger trial in the morning, and she was going to try to get to the Tsarnaev arraignment in the afternoon, as well. So they're trying to accommodate everyone. So security is very tight. HOBSON: Well as we said, this is going to be the first time that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev appears in public. Where has he been held all this time? BECKER: Well, he's been held - he was hospitalized, I mean, and then he was transferred to the Federal Correctional Medical Facility at Fort Devens in Massachusetts. That's about a 45-minute drive away from Boston, a little bit northwest of Boston. And the U.S. M", "Updated at 5:53 p.m. Reactions are pouring in to the death penalty handed Friday to Dzhokar Tsarnaev, the convicted Boston Marathon bomber. We will update this post with more reactions as we get them. Survivors, Families Of Victims Speak Several survivors of the bombing and the families of the victims held a news conference following the verdict. Karen Brassard, who survived the bombing, said today \"feels different only because it feels more complete.\" \"It feels like we can take a breath and kind of, actually, breathe again,\" she said. She added: \"There is nothing happy about having to take somebody's life. I'm satisfied, grateful that they came to that conclusion because for me, I think, it was the just conclusion.\" Liz Norden called the verdict \"bittersweet.\" \"There's no winner today, but I feel justice for my family,\" said Norden, whose sons were severely wounded in the bombing. \"I don't think there were any winners — but there was justice,\" she said. Michael Ward, an off-duty firefighter who was at the scene on the day of the bombing, said: \"This is nothing to celebrate. This is a matter of justice.\" He said Tsarnaev \"wanted to go to hell — and he's going to get there early.\" The parents of Martin Richard, the 8-year-old boy who was the youngest victim of the bombing, opposed the death penalty for Tsarnaev. They wrote in The Boston Globe last month, sentencing Tsarnaev to die \"could bring years of appeals and prolong reliving the most painful day of our lives.\" They have not yet reacted to the sentencing verdict. U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz: 'A Day For Reflection And Healing' \"Our thoughts should now turn away from the Tsarnaev brothers for good,\" she said. Ortiz said the verdict showed that \"we are not intimated by acts of terror.\" \"This was not a religious crime. This does not reflect Muslim belief,\" she said. \"It was a political crime designed to intimidate ... the United States.\" Boston Mayor Martin Walsh Hopes For 'Closure' \"I want to thank the jurors and the judiciary for their service to our community and our country. I hope this verdict provides a small amount of closure to the survivors, families, and all impacted by the violent and tragic events surrounding the 2013 Boston Marathon. We will forever remember and honor those who lost their lives and were affected by those senseless acts of violence on our City. Today, more than ever, we know that Boston is a City of hope, strength and resilience, that can overcome any challenge.\" Attorney General Loretta Lynch Calls It 'Fitting Punishment' \"Dzhokhar Tsarnaev coldly and callously perpetrated a terrorist attack that injured hundreds of Americans and ultimately took the lives of three individuals: Krystle Marie Campbell, a 29-year-old native of Medford; Lingzi Lu, a 23-year-old Boston University graduate student from China; and Martin Richard, an 8-year-old boy from Dorchester who was watching the marathon with his family just a few feet from the second bomb. In the aftermath of the attack, Tsarnaev and his brother murdered Sean Collier, a 27-year-old patrol officer on the MIT campus, extinguishing a life dedicated to family and service. \"We know all too well that no verdict can heal the souls of those who lost loved ones, nor the minds and bodies of those who suffered life-changing injuries from this cowardly attack. But the ultimate penalty is a fitting punishment for this horrific crime and we hope that the completion of this prosecution will bring some measure of closure to the victims and their families. We thank the jurors for their service, the people of Boston for their vigilance, resilience and support and the law enforcement community in Boston and throughout the country for their important work.\" John Carlin, Assistant Attorney General For National Security, Calls Tsarnaev 'Unrepentant Terrorist' \"The trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev proved incontrovertibly that he perpetrated a gruesome terror attack at the Boston Marathon that took the lives of three spectators and injured hundreds of men, women and children and later murdered a police officer. Tsarnaev is an unrepentant terrorist held to account by a justice system that provides due process of law even to those who commit the most horrific offenses. We extend our deepest sympathies to all those affected, and hope the conclusion of this trial provides an important measure of justice to those still healing. Tsarnaev's conviction is a result of the tremendous work of countless public servants who worked around the clock to investigate this case, secure the community's safety, and identify the perpetrators. I would also like to thank the members of the jury for their dedicated service in this case.\"", "The latest developments in the investigation into the bombings at the Boston Marathon and related news include: Update at 7:36 p.m. ET. Suspect Unarmed When Arrested: When police cornered Dzhokhar Tsarnev in a boat in Watertown, they said they traded fire with the Boston bombing suspect. Federal officials, however, are telling The Washington Post and the Associated Press that the suspect was unarmed at the time. The AP reports: \"The officials tell The Associated Press that no gun was found in the boat. Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said earlier that shots were fired from inside the boat.\" The Post reports the federal officials they spoke to declined to say what made officers open fire. Update at 5:42 p.m. ET. Sales Of 'Sweet Caroline' Up: Since the Boston bombings, sales of Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline have soared 597 percent. The AP reports: \"Nielsen SoundScan said Wednesday the song sold 19,000 tracks this week. It sold 2,800 tracks the previous week and 1.75 million tracks to date. \"The crowd-pleasing song is a staple of Boston Red Sox games. It makes no specific mention of Boston or the Red Sox, but the team started playing it regularly at Fenway Park more than a decade ago and fans took to it.\" Update at 5:29 p.m. ET. Bombing Suspect Was Placed On Watch List: The Washington Post reports: \"The CIA asked the main U.S. counterterrorism agency to add the name of one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers to a watch list more than a year before the attack, according to U.S. officials.\" NPR's Dina Temple-Raston reports that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a firefight with police, was placed on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) list, a very large list that's different from the Terrorist Watchlist or the No-Fly List, which are more significant. \"The fact that his name was on the TIDE list does not indicate anything more about Tamerlan's activities than has been reported already,\" Dina reports. That is, as the Post reports, his name was added after Russian authorities warned the U.S. that Tsarnaev may have been radicalizing. Update at 2:15 p.m. ET Bombs Used Remote-Controlled Triggers: The Los Angeles Times, quoting a joint FBI-Department of Homeland Security bulletin sent to state and local law enforcement, reports that investigators believe the two homemade bombs used in the Boston Marathon blasts were triggered by remote controllers designed for toy cars. \"Based on preliminary analysis of recovered evidence, each device likely incorporated an electrical fusing system using components from remote control toy cars such as a transmitter and receiver pair operating at 2.4 GHz, an electronic speed control used as the switch mechanism and sub-C rechargeable battery packs at the power source,\" read the bulletin, according to an official. Both pressure cooker bombs used a low explosive mixture that incorporated nitrate and perchlorate-based oxidizers, the bulletin said. Investigators don't know if the explosive was purchased that way or was mixed from different sources. The shrapnel included BBs and carpenter nails, the newspaper reported. Update at 1:25 p.m. ET James Taylor's \"Shower the People\": \"Shower the people you love with love \"Show them the way that you feel\" James Taylor and a student group from MIT just honored slain officer Sean Collier with his song. Update at 1:20 p.m. ET. For Slain Officer, An Irish Poet's Words: At the memorial service for MIT officer Sean Collier, Vice President Biden quotes poet Seamus Heany's \"The Cure at Troy\" (a translation of \"The Philoctetes\" by Sophocles): \"History says, Don't hope on this side of the grave. \"But then, once in a lifetime the longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme.\" Update at 1:15 p.m. ET. Biden Says Terrorists \"Will Not Write The History Of This Nation\": \"I promise you,\" Vice President Biden said moments ago to the students at MIT, where campus officer Sean Collier is being remembered this hour, \"these events since 9/11 will not write the history of this nation. They will be a mere chapter. ... \"We will not change and they [terrorists] will not marginalize us. They will eventually be marginalized,\" he added. Update at 1:10 p.m. ET. Biden Is Struck By Slain Officer's Life; Condemns \"Cowardly Knock-off Jihadis\": At the memorial service for MIT police officer Sean Collier, who was killed Thursday night, Vice President Biden just said he was particularly struck in recent days by something a student told the news media about the officer: \"He loved us and we loved him.\" \"From what I've learned,\" Biden said, Collier lived a life devoted to helping others. To the hundreds of police officers from around the nation who are at the service, Biden said \"we all owe you so much more than just honoring you on days of grief.\" And to their families, he said he salutes them for standing by the officers. Of the suspects in the bombings and Collier's death, Biden called them \"two twisted, perverted, cow", "We first met Adrianne Haslet-Davis last year, in the days after the Boston Marathon bombing. She is the ballroom dancer whose leg was injured in the blast. The day of the bombing, she begged her emergency room physician, Dr. Ron Medzon, to save it. The team at Boston Medical Center was unable to fulfill that wish, but Adrianne is still determined to return to her dancing career. She now has a prosthetic and has become an advocate for amputees, especially young women. She has also gained national recognition, and is expected to be on an upcoming season of &#8220;Dancing with the Stars.&#8221; Adrianne tells Here & Now&#8217;s Robin Young about her struggles from the past year and her adjustments, like the first time she dreamed of herself walking with a prosthetic &#8212; perhaps a sign that her life has moved on. On Monday, she will be cheering on her twin brothers, who will run the Boston Marathon in her name. \nSee Robin&#8217;s April 22, 2013, interview with Adrianne Haslet-Davis\nInterview with ER physician Ron Medzon\n\nInterview Highlights: Adrianne Haslet-Davis On how she&#8217;s feeling approaching Monday&#8217;s Boston Marathon &#8220;It&#8217;s tough, you know. It&#8217;s really tough. I physically feel uneasy. Just &#8211; it&#8217;s hard to think that it&#8217;s been a year. I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;m scared of the marathon. I think it&#8217;s just I&#8217;m nervous to not know what kind of emotional state I&#8217;ll be in at that time. I just want to feel safe and I want the city to feel safe and comfortable and to go out and show support like they did during the Red Sox parade and pack the streets like 70 deep. It was so loud and I was cheering for the Red Sox but I was mostly cheering for the people that were cheering.&#8221; On how her husband Adam Davis is doing &#8220;He&#8217;s doing well. You know, we both take it day by day. As much as it&#8217;s easy to see that I have lost my limb, he has suffered tremendously as well. He has constant ringing in his ears and that can drive a person crazy, and he&#8217;s coping as beautifully as you possibly could in that situation. He also doesn&#8217;t have feeling in his left foot, from the ankle forward. So it&#8217;s tough, you know, he&#8217;s limping by the end of the day and trying to stay strong for both of us.&#8221; On advocating for other amputees, especially girls &#8220;I certainly want to use my voice for good and especially young girls that are out there facing this and feeling alone. And there&#8217;s a large part of your body that feels completely broken. I remember feeling like my body was so foreign to me &#8212; at the age of 32, which is something you&#8217;ve gotten used to by then. I felt like I had a hand growing out of my forehead. And just felt so different from every person on the planet, and that is a horrible feeling.&#8221; On dreams and recovery &#8220;I had my first dream as an amputee about two and a half months ago, actually. And I went into my therapist and he said, &#8216;Oh my gosh, wait, you said you were an amputee.&#8217; And I said yes, and he said &#8216;that is incredible, your subconscious believes you&#8217;re an amputee &#8211; that usually doesn&#8217;t happen for the first five years.&#8217; So I thought that that was really interesting and I have had dreams since then that I am an amputee &#8212; both that I have both limbs and that I am an amputee. But I was very proud of myself that that is already happening within the first year. So he was shocked. And I like to be an overachiever when it comes to recovery, so I was happy that happened.&#8221; Guests\n\nAdrianne Haslet-Davis, dancer who lost a leg in the Boston Marathon bombing.\nTimothy Haslet, brother of Adrianne Haslet-Davis.\n ROBIN YOUNG, HOST: And now we're going to visit with a favorite guest and her brother, Timothy, who's come to run for her in the Boston Marathon on Monday. Let's back up. This week, we've been marking the one year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings, hearing from people like Dr. Ron Medzon of Boston Medical Center, who spoke to us the day after the bombings last year about a survivor who came through his emergency room. RON MEDZON: One of the women I was talking with, who also had a really bad leg injury, was telling me that she's a competitive dancer. And, you know, I just felt super-horrible. And, I mean, there are no words. ADRIANNE HASLET-DAVIS: I remember telling a lot of doctors that I was a ballroom dancer and that it was extremely important that I kept my foot, that I could still feel every toe and move every toe. YOUNG: And then ultimately what happened? HASLET-DAVIS: Oh, I woke up, and I didn't have a foot anymore. How are you? UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Good. It's so cold; come on in. HASLET-DAVIS: It's freezing. YOUNG: That young woman was Adrianne Haslet-Davis, a professional ballroom dancer. HASLET-DAVIS: It's so good to see you. The last time I saw you, I wasn't even - I didn't even have a leg yet, right? UNIDEN", "Footage from surveillance cameras along the Boston Marathon route gave the FBI early clues about the bombing suspects. And prosecutors say they'll use some of those images to try to prove their criminal case against 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. But the proliferation of cameras in America's big cities is raising some tricky questions about the balance between security and privacy. It was pictures of two brothers taken by a camera outside the Lord & Taylor department store that provided the first glimpse of the men who allegedly bombed the Boston Marathon. \"What was perfectly obvious after the attack was the most important thing was to know who had attacked us, and to begin the process of tracking them down,\" says former Homeland Security official Stewart Baker, who says he's been watching the events unfold. \"And the cameras were absolutely essential for that purpose.\" Government Cameras Vs. Private Cameras Baker says even though some amateur sleuths misidentified the men in those images, he expects to see more cameras playing a role in big investigations — not to deter crime, but to catch criminals after the fact. He points out that similar images helped authorities in London get to the bottom of who bombed the subway system there back in 2005. But privacy expert Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, says there was one critical difference there — those closed-circuit TV cameras throughout London are operated by the government. Boston has only about 60 cameras controlled by law enforcement, Sanchez says. The cameras that proved so helpful there last week were privately owned. \"In a way, private, distributed surveillance cameras create a kind of network of 'little brothers' instead of a Big Brother, so you get the same benefits to a great extent without incurring the risks to civil liberties,\" he says. That's because those cameras owned by local businesses target small areas. They capture activity that most people in that public place can see with their own eyes. And they usually record over themselves every week, cutting down on the intrusions to privacy. One more thing: Those company-owned cameras generally don't feed back to a big networked system, where police are watching. Surveillance Limits? Ben Wizner, who directs the speech, privacy and technology project at the American Civil Liberties Union, says he doesn't object to the way police used surveillance in Boston. \"I think, in some ways, this is an easy case because when there's a crime of this nature, there's no problem whatsoever for the police to get any kind of permission they need from judges in order to conduct surveillance,\" Wizner says. Wizner says that means going to a judge to get a warrant for the images on privately owned cameras or taking advantage of an emergency exception in the law to get that footage more quickly. But he warns that surveillance can go too far. \"The questions that we have are: Do we want a society in which cameras are literally everywhere and we can't walk down the street holding someone's hand without being recorded in a government database? And then, what happens to all of this personal footage, almost all of which does not capture terrorists, when the event has been solved?\" he adds. The ACLU says it wants authorities to be careful about storing those images of innocent people in law enforcement databases with no time limit for erasing them. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the House Intelligence Committee and a former federal prosecutor, says the tug of war over privacy is nothing new. \"It goes back to the Constitution,\" Schiff says. \"It was part and parcel of the Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures. We've always expressed a strong constitutional preference for privacy, for not giving the government unbridled authority, even to protect us.\" Schiff says that means we sometimes take risks, but that's all part of living in a free society. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Audie Cornish. ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: And I'm Robert Siegel. As part of our coverage of the Boston bombings, we begin this hour with two stories. We'll hear about the design of the bombs and what they might reveal about the plot. But first, questions of surveillance and privacy. Footage from cameras along the Boston Marathon route gave the FBI important clues, and prosecutors say they will use some of those images to try to prove their criminal case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Still, as NPR's Carrie Johnson reports, the proliferation of cameras in America's big cities is raising some tricky questions. CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: It was pictures of two brothers taken by a camera outside the Lord and Taylor department store that provided the first break in the Boston Marathon case. Former Homeland Security official Stewart Baker... STEWART BAKER: What was perfectly obvious after the attack was the most important thing was to know who had attacked us and to begi", "The latest developments in the investigation into the April 15 bombings at the Boston Marathon and related news include: Update at 2 p.m. ET. FBI Says Suspects Planned Explosions In Times Square, New York Mayor Bloomberg Says: The FBI believes that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who authorities say were behind the Boston bombings, wanted to travel to New York City last Friday and detonate more explosives in Times Square, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg just told reporters. New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly added that, under questioning, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told investigators of the plan. Their alleged plan was foiled, Kelly said, when the SUV they had carjacked ran low on fuel and they had to stop for gas. When the driver they had taken hostage escaped, that alerted authorities to the suspects' whereabouts and lead to the gun battle and subsequent search in Watertown, Mass., that ended with Tamerlan dead and Dzhokhar in custody. The ccomments from Bloomberg and Kelly follow reports Wednesday that the victim of the carjacking had told authorities the suspects wanted to go to New York City. Update at 1:45 p.m. ET. Report: Russian Officials Said Tamerlan Tsarnaev Had No Known Contact With Terrorist Groups. \"Russia has informed the United States that it knew of no contact between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and any known terrorist groups during his six-month trip to Dagestan in 2012, according to an official who attended a closed-door Senate briefing Thursday morning by top counterterrorism officials.\" (The Boston Globe) -- Update at 10 a.m. ET. There's Nothing Wrong With Misha, The Man Authorities Want To Speak To, Suspects' Mother Says. She Also Wonders If Bombings Were A Hoax: He's \"very nice ... very intelligent\" and there's \"nothing wrong\" with a man known as Misha who allegedly encouraged her older son to embrace radical Islam, Zubeidat Tsarnaev says during an interview CNN is broadcasting. She's the mother of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the young men authorities say were behind the bombings that killed three people and injured more than 200 and who then allegedly killed an MIT police officer and wounded a Boston transit officer. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died from injuries he received during a gun battle with police last Friday. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is in a Boston hospital. He faces a charge of using a weapon of mass destruction in the bombings. Zubeidat Tsarnaev goes on to tell CNN that she still believes her sons are innocent. \"I really feel there is something wrong,\" she says of the accounts of what authorities say her sons did. She also tells CNN she isn't sure the bombings actually happened. As we reported earlier, sources tell NPR's Dina Temple-Raston that the FBI is anxious to find and speak with Misha. The day's early headlines and news: -- Looking For \"Misha\": Relatives of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old suspect who died Friday after a gun battle with police, have told news outlets that they think he may have been \"brainwashed\" into embracing radical Islam by an Armenian man named Misha, as CNN reports. On Morning Edition, NPR's Dina Temple-Raston said Tsarnaev's mother, who is in Dagestan, has led U.S. investigators to believe that while she encouraged her son to practice Islam, \"she wanted it to be a positive thing.\" Officials familiar with what she has told investigators report that the mother says \"she had no idea there was another layer to his beliefs,\" Dina added. So, the FBI is looking for the friend, Dina reported. American and Russian officials have been interviewing Tsarnaev's parents in Dagestan. There are reports that the father, at least, may soon come to the U.S. Both parents have told news outlets they do not believe their sons (the surviving suspect is Tamerlan's 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar) were responsible for the bombings that killed three people and wounded more than 200, or for the murder of an MIT police officer last Thursday. -- Russia Also Asked The CIA About Tamerlan Tsarnaev: As we reported Wednesday, word has emerged that the CIA asked in 2011 that Tamerlan Tsarnaev's name be added to a database known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE. The New York Times adds that \"despite being told in 2011 that an FBI review had found that a man who went on to become one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings had no ties to extremists, the Russian government asked the Central Intelligence Agency six months later for whatever information it had on him, American officials said Wednesday. After its review, the CIA also told the Russian intelligence service that it had no suspicious information on the man, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. ... It is not clear what prompted the Russians to make the request.\" On Morning Edition, Dina reported that sources say investigators conducted three interviews at the time (with Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his parents) and a \"massive database search.\" They found no evidence he had done anything illegal, officials have told her. The ", "Updated at 2:28 p.m. ET Convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev broke his silence Wednesday and apologized to the victims and the survivors of the deadly 2013 attack. \"I am sorry for the lives that I've taken, for the suffering that I've caused you, and the damage that I've done,\" he said Wednesday during his sentencing hearing. The remarks are Tsarnaev's first in public since the attack that killed three people and left 264 others wounded. He was found guilty of the bombing on April 8; the jury gave him the death penalty May 15. \"I pray to Allah to bestow his mercy on you,\" Tsarnaev said prior to Judge George O'Toole imposing the death sentence. \"I pray for your relief, for your healing, for your well-being, for your health.\" He added: \"I ask Allah for mercy for me and for my brother,\" Tamerlan. Tsarnaev also thanked his attorneys and those who testified on his behalf, but added: \"I am guilty of [the bombings], along with my brother, if there is any lingering doubt.\" Here's the background to the case, as reported by NPR's Eyder Peralta at the time of the guilty verdict in April: \"A jury in Boston has found 21-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty on all counts related to the 2013 bombings of the Boston Marathon. The twin bombings, carried out with his older brother, Tamerlan, killed three people and left 264 others wounded. \"The jury convicted Tsarnaev on all charges, ranging from carjacking to using a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death. Tsarnaev was found guilty in the deaths of Krystle Campbell, Lingzi Lu and 8-year-old Martin Richard during the bombings as well as for the death of MIT police officer Sean Collier during a shootout that ensued after the bombings. Seventeen of the 30 counts can carry the death penalty.\" Imposing the sentence, Judge O'Toole called the jury's verdict \"rational based on the evidence.\" \"Whenever your name is mentioned, all that will be remembered is the evil you have done,\" he told Tsarnaev before sentencing him to death. Tsarnaev will be taken to Terre Haute, Ind., to the federal government's death row. An appeals process is likely to take years. Our friends at WBUR are in the courtroom and tweeting his remarks. You can see them here:", "(We put a new top on this post at 1:25 p.m. ET.) \"The FBI never told the Boston police or the Massachusetts State Police about possible Russian terror connections of the suspected Marathon bombers until three and half days after the attack, law enforcement officials testified today before the House Homeland Security Committee,\" ABC News writes. The network adds that Boston police commissioner Edward Davis said \"his department was not told before the bombing that the FBI had opened an investigation into Tamerlan Tsarnaev, or that Tsarnaev had traveled to the North Caucasus, even though he had three detectives and a sergeant assigned to the Joint Terror Task Force with the FBI.\" If Boston police had known that Russian authorities asked the FBI to check into Tsarnaev's possible ties to extremists in Dagestan, and that such an investigation had been done, \"we would have taken a hard look at these individuals,\" Davis said, according to Boston Magazine. The Boston Globe adds that the revelation about what Boston authorities weren't told \"drew outrage from members of the House Committee on Homeland Security. ... 'The idea the feds have this information and it's not shared with state and locals defies why we created the Homeland Security Department in the first place,' said Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican and chairman of the committee.\" Still, The Associated Press writes that while Davis said he would have liked to have known that federal authorities had been investigating Tsarnaev, that knowledge might not have prevented the attack. The FBI, he noted, had closed its case involving Tsarnaev. \"I can't say I would've come to a different conclusion based on the information at the time,\" said Davis. Tsarnaev died on April 19 following a gun battle with police. The twin bombings near the marathon's finish line, which killed three people and wounded more than 250, happened April 15. The other suspect in the bombings, Tsarnaev's brother Dzhokhar, was captured on the 19th. Our original post — Boston's Top Cop: Boost Security, But Avoid 'Police State': \"Soft targets\" such as the Boston Marathon and other public events need to be made more secure from terrorist attacks, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis told Congress on Thursday. But in testimony prepared for the first hearing into the April 15 bombings that killed three people and wounded more than 250, Davis added: \"This need, however, must be balanced against the protection of our Constitutional liberties. I do not endorse actions that move Boston and our nation into a police state mentality, with surveillance cameras attached to every light pole in the city. We do not, and cannot live in a protective enclosure because of the actions of extremists who seek to disrupt our way of life.\" According to Davis: -- \"In the future we will review the need to deploy more assets including technology, cameras, undercover officers and specialized units. We will continue to enhance preparedness training for all of our officers to protect these large events.\" -- \"My police career has been built on the concept of community policing that encourages our officers to get out of cars, talk with people and solve problems in partnership with the community. This absolutely works. The community played a critical role in this fight against terrorism. In Watertown, [Mass.] despite heavy police presence for more than 12 hours, and a house by house search in a twenty block perimeter for one of the two suspects, it was the critical observation of a neighbor that something was amiss in his backyard that led to the capture of one of the bombers. In Boston, it was the cooperation of the owners of the Forum Restaurant whose video cameras led to the identification of the two terrorists. It was the cooperation of the people of Boston, Watertown, and several other neighboring communities who voluntarily assisted our police departments by staying indoors during this protracted manhunt that led to the safe resolution of the capture.\" -- \"Clearly, we can and must do more. I come before you today to ask for continued investments in infrastructure that would aid in our policing efforts. In the case of the Boston Marathon bombings, we had to rely almost exclusively on the support of our business partners to provide critical video surveillance along the finish line. The information helped us identify and catch these two terrorists. I strongly support the enhanced ability to monitor public places. ... \"These efforts are not intended to chill or stifle free speech, but rather to protect the integrity and freedom of that speech and to protect the rights of victims and suspects alike.\" -- \"I also encourage the federal government to continue the important funding for the hiring of police officers as well as intelligence analysts, who are needed for both the prevention of further crimes as well as to respond to incidents such as this one.\" -- \"Additionally, law enforcement needs secure radio band", "A jury in Boston has found 21-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty on all counts related to the 2013 bombings of the Boston Marathon. The twin bombings, carried out with his older brother, Tamerlan, killed three people and left 264 others wounded. The jury convicted Tsarnaev on all charges, ranging from carjacking to using a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death. Tsarnaev was found guilty in the deaths of Krystle Campbell, Lingzi Lu and 8-year-old Martin Richard during the bombings as well as for the death of MIT police officer Sean Collier during a shootout that ensued after the bombings. Seventeen of the 30 counts can carry the death penalty. Next will comes the sentencing phase. WBUR, which is live tweeting, reports that won't begin until next week. NPR member station WBUR, which is live-tweeting the verdict, reports that as the verdict was read, Tsarnaev kept his head down, apparently \"reading the verdict sheet.\" Occasionally, WBUR reports, Tsarnaev would look up, but he had \"no expression.\" During the trial, prosecutors argued that Tsarnaev was cold and calculating. \"There was nothing about this day that was a twist of fate,\" Assistant U.S. Attorney Aloke Chakravarty told the jurors during closing arguments. \"This was a cold, calculated terrorist act. This was intentional. It was bloodthirsty. It was to make a point. It was to tell America that 'We will not be terrorized by you anymore. We will terrorize you.'\" Tsarnaev's defense attorneys never denied that Tsarnaev participated in the bombings, but they argued that he was under the strong influence of his brother. If you remember, the 2013 Boston Marathon was rocked by two explosions, as the last wave of runners were making their way across the finish line. The blasts killed three spectators, maimed dozens of others, and unleashed a massive manhunt that shutdown most of the Boston metropolitan area. Tsarnaev's brother, Tamerlan, died following a gunfight with police and Tsarnaev was eventually found badly injured hiding in a boat behind a home in Watertown, Mass. The jury reached its verdict after deliberating for a little more than a day. Update at 3:45 p.m. ET. Glad Tsarnaev Showed No Emotion: Karen Brassard, who survived the bombing, told reporters: \"We're grateful to have him off the street. I'm grateful to show everyone, the world, that it's not tolerated. This is not how we behave. And we're grateful that everybody has worked so hard to make it known that, you know, we're not going to allow this.\" She went on: \"For me, it just didn't matter, you know. He was all in. he's a grown man and made choices knowing what the outcome could be and knowing what the consequence would be. And he made the choice to go ahead.\" She said she was speaking for a group of survivors and for the family members of victims. Update at 2:25 p.m. ET. Half Way Through Charges: We're halfway through the charges and so far jury has returned a guilty verdict on all 15. As NPR's Tovia Smith reports, \"In a nutshell: Tsarnaev faces the death penalty. A whole new trial on sentencing begins after this.\" Update at 2:09 p.m. ET. Judge, Jury Enter Court Room: Per WBUR: \"Judge/Jury enter. Here we go. #Tsarnaev\" Update at 1:57 p.m. ET. The Charges: WBUR has a rundown of the 30 charges the jury has made a decision on. Counts one through 10 are punishable by the death penalty, so as the verdict comes down, keep that in mind. In total, 17 of the charges, from conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction to using a weapon of mass destruction, could carry the death penalty.", "Jurors started deliberating Tuesday in the case of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The defense has acknowledged that Dzhokhar planted the bomb that killed three people and injured 264 others two years ago. Since there's no doubt about Dzhokhar's involvement, the main question is about the likely sentence: life imprisonment or the death penalty. One person who has been watching the trial closely is journalist Masha Gessen, who has written extensively about Dzhokhar and his older brother Tamerlan. Tamerlan was killed during a shootout with the police after the attack. \"We were hoping, those of us who have been interested in the case ... that some facts would emerge from the trial, that as the FBI presented its case for the prosecution we would learn things ... that we didn't know before,\" Gessen tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. \"There were some gaping holes in our knowledge,\" Gessen adds. \"One of them is where and when were the bombs made. The FBI agents who testified at the trial admitted that they don't know where the bombs were made. If they don't know where the bombs were made, that also means they don't know if anybody else was involved in the plot to bomb the marathon.\" In her new book The Brothers, Gessen traces the history of the Tsarnaev family, including the brothers' parents and grandparents, covering the persecution and wars that kept uprooting the family from the Russian republics of Chechnya and Dagestan. Gessen traveled to Dagestan, where the brothers' mother grew up, and where the family lived when the brothers were children. She also researched their lives extensively in the U.S. Dzhokhar has been charged with 30 counts, 17 of which carry the death penalty. \"The defense ... has been trying to say that it was Tamerlan who sort of had the belief system and was dragging Dzhokhar along and Dzhokhar was a typical teenager who was interested in girls, cars, drugs and maybe a little bit of Islam,\" Gessen says. Gessen says Dzhokhar was a pot dealer at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth who talked with friends about pop culture. \"I think the belief system — to the extent that there was a belief system — the belief system belonged to Tamerlan, and Dzhokhar went along with it,\" Gessen says. \"The problem is that there's actually no indication that the belief system is the determining factor of terrorism. ... Beliefs, even radical beliefs, are not a predictor of terrorist behavior.\" Interview Highlights On the Tsarnaev family immigrating right after Sept. 11 They were used to being suspect; they were used to always being outsiders and ... always having to prove that they were not criminals. The other thing that was happening at the same time was that Russia and the United States were entering into a new alliance against so-called international Islamic terrorism. And the reason why I say \"so-called\" was because for Russia this was actually a great opportunity to squash any criticism of the wars it has been waging in Chechnya and Dagestan, which now got reframed as \"wars against Islamic terrorism.\" On Tamerlan's immigration experience He was 16, which is a horrible age to immigrate. And it was also a very difficult moment for the family because he was their firstborn who they believed was destined for greatness. But he was too old to really go to high school and get into a good college, so how were they going to make sure that he got the \"greatness\" that he deserved? The whole family and some friends were mobilized to figure this out. They decided that he was going to become a boxing star — that he was going to become a boxer and join the U.S. Olympic team. One of the weird tragedies of this story is that this wasn't an unrealistic dream. It wasn't crazy. He was that talented. Immediately after he started boxing, he started winning amateur competitions. He may very well have been on his way to the U.S. Olympic team. He didn't make it, apparently, because right around the time that he would've qualified, the amateur competitive circuit changed its rules to disqualify non-U.S. citizens. So he had permanent residence, but not U.S. citizenship, and he could no longer compete. On Dzhokhar's immigration experience He was 8 when he got here, so he started second grade in the United States. He was a good student; he spoke English without an accent; his high school classmates remember him as a social superstar. Everybody loved him. There was something that was happening to him around the time that he started college or just before. There are weird and sometimes inexplicable details: He chose the least competitive school that he could possibly go to which was UMass Dartmouth. Around the time that he started college, he started creating a new Russian-speaking Chechen identity for himself online, which for a kid who was 8 when he came here is actually sort of a feat of linguistic heroism. It's very difficult to write in Russian for someone who has never been schooled in Russian. But he was c" ]

[ "Anubis - Wikipedia Anubis is the Greek name of a god associated with mummification and the afterlife in ancient ... 2055 1650 BC) he was replaced by Osiris in his role as lord of the ... son of Nephthys and Osiris, but that he was adopted by Osiris's wife Isis: ... Anubis then flayed Set and wore his skin as a warning against evil-doers who...", "Mythology - jService.io - Jeopardy trivia question API Clues for: Mythology. Question, Answer, Value, Airdate.", "Egyptian Mythology - Myth Encyclopedia - god, story, names ... Ancient Egypt had a remarkably large and diverse pantheon of deities, with many ... Sometimes the names and characters of two or more gods were combined to form one .... During his absence, he left his sister-wife, Isis, in charge. ... By the time Osiris returned to Egypt, his evil brother Set had concocted a plot to kill him.", "The Abydos Triad, Osiris, Isis and Horus, and Seth When he was twenty-eight Osiris was murdered and dismembered by his brother Seth, according to one tradition because he had had an affair with Seth's wife...", "Isis - Wikipedia Isis is a goddess from the polytheistic pantheon of Egypt. She was first worshiped in ancient ... She married her brother, Osiris, and she conceived Horus with him. .... But in addition, Isis was also represented as the mother of the \"four sons of Horus\", .... Set had measured Osiris in his sleep and made sure that he was the only..." ]

[ "Isis - Wikipedia Isis is a goddess from the polytheistic pantheon of Egypt. She was first worshiped in ancient ... Isis was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife as well as the patroness of nature and magic. She was the friend of .... She was represented as a daughter of Nut and Geb, and sister to Osiris, Nephthys, and Set. The two sisters...", "Isis | Egyptian goddess | Britannica.com Married to Osiris, king of Egypt, Isis was a good queen who supported her husband and taught ... But Seth was jealous, and he hatched a plot to kill his brother.", "NEW_MYTH_READER_06.pdf - Art History La 462 with Johndobson ... Sep 10, 2014 ... But Seth the evil one, their brother, envied Osiris and hated Isis. .... The maidens told her of the wonderful woman who sat by the seashore, and Queen Astarte sent ... way in a boat made of POWER OF MYTH AND SYMBOL READER 7 ...... 30 BC Started with Ptolemy I of Egypt and ended with Cleopatra VI.", "Gods of Ancient Egypt: Osiris - Ancient Egypt Online Osiris (Asir) was the first son of Geb and Nut and the brother of Set, Horus (the elder), Isis and Nephthys. ... After his murder by Set he became the king of the underworld and presided over the judgment of dead souls. ... Legend held that the ancient Egyptians had been cannibals until ...", "Ancient Egypt: the Mythology - The Story of Isis and Osiris Aug 17, 2014 ... When Osiris was grown up he married his sister Isis, a custom which the ... stronger grew Seth's desire to kill his brother and rule in his place.", "Isis - Wikipedia Isis is a goddess from the polytheistic pantheon of Egypt. She was first worshiped in ancient ... Isis is also known as protector of the dead and goddess of children. ..... The Roman writer Apuleius recorded aspects of the cult of Isis in the 2nd ... Ass. The protagonist Lucius prays to Isis as Regina Caeli, \"Queen of Heaven\":.", "Ancient Egypt: the Mythology - The Story of Isis and Osiris Aug 17, 2014 ... On the third day the second son of Nut was born, dark Seth, the lord of evil. ... When Osiris was grown up he married his sister Isis, a custom which ..... Horus the great god, the lord of the sky, has slain the enemy of his father!", "Osiris myth - Wikipedia The Osiris myth is the most elaborate and influential story in ancient Egyptian mythology. It concerns the murder of the god Osiris, a primeval king of Egypt, and its consequences. Osiris's murderer, his brother Set, usurps his throne. Meanwhile, Osiris's wife Isis restores her husband's body, allowing him to ..... When he lies down in the chest, Set and his accomplices slam the cover shut...", "Husband of Isis - Crossword Clue Answers - Crossword Solver Find the answer to the crossword clue Husband of Isis. ... Egyptian god of the underworld and judge of the dead; husband and brother of Isis; father of Horus.", "Isis | Egyptian goddess | Britannica.com Isis, Egyptian Aset or Eset , one of the most important goddesses of ancient ... and she was most often represented as a beautiful woman wearing a sheath dress and either the hieroglyphic sign of the throne or a solar disk and cow's horns on her head. .... These gods became equated with Greek gods: Isis with Demeter and...", "Isis, Queen of Heaven - Internet History Sourcebooks When I had ended this prayer, and made known my needs to the Goddess, I fell ... Principally the Ethiopians which dwell in the Orient, and the Egyptians which are ... Lucius Apuleius: Metamophoses or The Golden Ass. Book 11, Chap 47.", "Isis Magic : Articles : Isis, Aset, Iset, Ast, Eset, AusetWhich is it ... ... anyone interested in the Goddess Isis, the history of Her worship, and how to bring ... who have had any involvement with Isis know, Isis is what the Greeks called Her. ... So if we know and can correctly pronounce the Goddess' Egyptian name, we .... Coptic is a late form of Egyptian that was written with Greek lettersplus...", "Isis - Wikipedia Isis is a goddess from the polytheistic pantheon of Egypt. She was first worshiped in ancient Egyptian religion, and later her worship ... She married her brother, Osiris, and she conceived Horus with him. ... 1 Etymology; 2 Principal features of the cult ... The Greek name version of Isis is close to her original, Egyptian name...", "Appendix. The Story of 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. 1909-14 ... He determined to leave his asses in order to save himself; so climbed up a large ... 'Ali Baba's wife went home, set the measure upon the heap of gold, filled it, and ... he confessed all, and offered his brother part of his treasure to keep the secret. .... his eyes till he had entered the room where she had put the corpse together.", "and now for some more sibling revelry: a brief ... - Washington Post Jan 24, 1993 ... His much-ignored wife once said, \"He was more afraid of the sun, ... in his brother's shadow and was oppressively dominated by him. ... Billy Carter -- the mother of all embarrassing brothers -- had to have been waging war.", "Who is the Virgin Mary? | Queen of Heaven - Truth Be Known Like the Christian Mary and Egyptian Isis, the Canaanite goddess Astarte, ... Ass (XI.2), Lucius Apuleius describes Isis's introduction of herself to the \"hapless ... \"The Virgin Mary is called not only the Mother of God, but the Queen of Heaven.", "nietzsche against the nazis - philosophical anthropology Often his ideas totally contradicted what the Nazis believed, so they simply .... The fact she was the author's sister, claimed to hold unpublished material, and often ... this respect than is the statement that the Nazis' way of citing him represents one ... She was indeed sympathetic to the growing fascist cause and married to a...", "Isis (TV Series 19751976) - IMDb Episode Guide. 22 episodes Isis Poster. An archaeologist gains an amulet that allows her to transform into the superheroine goddess Isis and fight evil.", "Women in Greek Myths - The Famous Chicks Jul 16, 2011 ... You should read the whole story. ... She openly defied her evil uncle King Creon to bury her brother, ... The most well known today has her springing from the blood of ... Her \"no work\" policy may make her seem like a ditz, but this lady had ... married) to just fun (women dressing up like a bear and dancing).", "Enduring Word Bible Commentary Judges Chapter 15 He had no business allowing himself to fall in love with an ungodly, pagan woman. ... against man for his sin and rebellion, but instead gave His only Son to die for man. ... With this remarkable victory, We are conscious of what he might have done ... One preacher came up with a five-point sermon on the jawbone of an ass,...", "Isis - Wikipedia In the typical form of her myth, Isis was the first daughter of Geb, god of the Earth, and Nut, goddess of the Sky, and she was born on the fourth intercalary day. She married her brother, Osiris, and she conceived Horus with him. Isis was instrumental in the resurrection of Osiris when he was murdered by Set.", "The Story of Osiris, Isis and Horus: The Egyptian Myth of ... - LAITS From Geb, the sky god, and Nut, the earth goddess came four children: Osiris, ... With Osiris dead, Set became king of Egypt, with his sister Nepthys as his wife.", "The 13 Biggest Assholes in Greek Mythology - io9 - Gizmodo Oct 29, 2013 ... It's a mystery why ancient Greeks worshipped their gods, because their gods ... After hearing a prophecy that one of his children would overthrow him, his ... hurt the hell out of her (no pun), causing her to conspire with Chronus to kill ... But she helped Jason to escape by distracting her dad by murdering her...", "Inappropriate Behaviour Ancient Future Collective Sep 13, 2016 ... Defending well known despots and tyrants could be an allowable offence ... which allows him to travel freely across America and throughout the world. ... makes him an instant celebrity in places fighting to become Islamic states, .... She saw her pregnancy as a sign from God, because she said; she always...", "Luke 8:2 and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits ... Among them were Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons; ... and certain women who had been cured from evil spirits and infirmities: Mary who is ... and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, ... gone out, 3Joanna the wife of Herod's household manager Chuza, Susanna,...", "Ancient States and Empires - The Free Information Society send a like destruction upon the earth, and as a sign and seal of ..... At the age of 120 Sarah died at Hebron, and Abraham Death of Sarah. purchased .... that his Hittite wife was offensive to his father, married also one ..... such as the working of metals and the tempering of steel. ...... He rejected her advances, and became as.", "Egyptian Creation Myths - Crystalinks The Ennead, in which Atum arose from the primordial waters (Neith), and ... they had a son, Hor (Horus; in the form known as Horus the Elder), who was married to Isis. ... Eventually, all the gods were thought of as aspects of Osiris, Isis, Horus, ... \"I am Khepera at the dawn, and Re at noon, and Tem in the evening,\" he said.", "Jeopary Questions page 1861 - FAMOUS FIRSTS - TriviaBistro.com DINNER & A MOVIE: The Pizza Planet is home to the 3-eyed aliens who worship the Claw in this 1995 film MYTHOLOGY: Set, the evil brother of this Egyptian...", "Ancient Egyptian Gods: Isis - Ancient Egypt Online Isis was one of the oldest gods or goddesses of ancient Egypt but her origins are ... she was first worshipped as a fetish in the Delta area of Lower Egypt around ... Hathor (who was described as the mother or the wife of Horus or Ra) and so Isis...", "Horus - Wikipedia Horus was told by his mother, Isis, to protect the people of Egypt from Set, the god of the desert, who had killed Horus' father, Osiris.", "Horus - Wikipedia Horus is one of the most significant ancient Egyptian deities. He was worshipped from at least .... Horus was born to the goddess Isis after she retrieved all the dismembered body parts of her ... Horus was told by his mother, Isis, to protect the people of Egypt from Set, the god of the desert, who had killed Horus' father, Osiris.", "11-12-12 POSTS - albert louis peia He has done this to help cover up his unequivocal failure by any standard by ... Buchanan: 'Obama has steadily diminished both himself and the office he holds'. ...... John Gotti Jr, when asked in court if the family still dealt drugs cracked, No, .... It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley's feelies, the orgy-porgy and..." ]

[ "a sword" ]

[ "often", "almost", "Decoration Day", "Personal", "Had", "Yard", "hit often", "Person", "Yards", "Robin Givens", "Almost Heaven", "a letter", "Almost Famous", "letters", "$5", "5", "names", "concealed weapons", "the Longs", "-5", "Any Given Sunday", "Lethal Weapon", "third person", "No Name", "Minnesota Vikings", "Had kittens", "nuclear weapons", "displaced person", "had twins", "99 yards", "5 (5 + 0)", "Stomp the Yard" ]

[ "Billy Goat Tavern co-owner Bill Sianis revealed some secrets just before reopening Friday night.\nA party room is under construction next door to the historic Lower Michigan Avenue flagship. When it’s completed, the home of the “Cheezborger” will hold an official grand reopening sometime this spring.\nThe Goat did reopen Friday night after 10 weeks of infrastructure improvements to electrical and plumbing. The changes seem subtle. A new bright white drop ceiling with dimmable recessed lighting appears most noticeable at first. That is until a visit to what once were vintage restrooms. The dramatic transformation borrowed from what was office space creating a spacious spa-like sanctuary in neutral, natural tones.\nThe menu board remains the same said Sianis. But a counter card says you can order the Curse-Breaker. Winner of the 2017 Roscoe Village Burger Fest critics’ choice award, it’s a Cheezborger with bacon, jalapeno, grilled onions and pickles.\nNot on the menu? A secret Obama burger.\n“Obama staffers came up with it,” said Sianis. “They used to work late into the night then come in to eat and always ordered it.”\nThe Obama burger is a double Cheezborger with bacon, egg and grilled onions. Like all Billy Goat burgers you can dress it yourself at the condiment bar with pickles, raw onion, relish, mustard, ketchup, salt and pepper. The massive breakfast, lunch and late night dinner mashup is barely contained in the sturdy house Kaiser burger bun roll.\nCreated during Obama’s first campaign for president in 2008 “it was about eight bucks back then” said Sianis. The Obama burger rings up to about $10 now, including tax.\nBilly Goat Tavern, 430 N. Michigan Ave., 312-222-1525, www.billygoattavern.com\nlchu@chicagotribune.com\nTwitter @louisachu\nTaste test: How does the new frozen Billy Goat 'cheezborger' compare to the original? »\n2 new Billy Goat beers as hot as cheezborgers as iconic bar hypes brand »\nThe best burgers in Chicago of 2016 »" ]

[ "Glazed donut burgers may not be so unusual in these unprecedented times.\nCrazy Annie’s, a New American craft burger, BBQ and shake joint from the owners of trendy Harlem Tavern, has just opened uptown at 3910 Broadway at 164th Street.\nIt lives up to its name.\nThe glazed donut burger is a hamburger served on a warm, glazed donut with a fried egg, bacon and American cheese.\nThe 4,000- square-foot space seats 110 people and another 20 in the bar area. There’s also outdoor seating for 40 people in warm weather.\nThe owners are Stephen Daly, Sheri Wilson-Daly and Mike O’Neill. Daly and Wilson-Daly also co-own Harlem Tavern, Row House and Tonic Times Square.\nLater this month, Annie’s Grab & Go will open off the main dining room.\nWe hear…\nThat Los Angeles Chef Ludo Lefebvre joined Chef Daniel Boulud on March 12 for his 20th Annual Sunday Supper at Daniel, benefiting Citymeals on Wheels. Cooking alongside these culinary czars were Chefs Grant Achatz, Edouard Loubet, Heinz Reitbauer and Raymond Weber. Top Chef’s Gail Simmons was the emcee.", "As June arrives, classrooms become abuzz with antsy eyeballs glancing out the window at the summer weather and thoughts of vacation plans pushing out any shred of curriculum from the brain. And we're just talking about the teachers. Hey, after months of educating (and wrangling) 30 or so of the next generation, teachers deserve a break. According to burger chain Red Robin, they also deserve a free burger and fries, too, which is exactly what they'll get.\nOn Tuesday, June 5, the sit-down burger restaurant will offer a pretty savory deal for school employees from its menu of Tavern Double burger combos (slightly smaller than the chain's classic burgers). Just show up to any participating location with a valid school ID, and Red Robin will give you a burger of your choice with a side of bottomless steak fries. The Tavern Double burger options are:\nCowboy Ranch Tavern Double: Two classic patties, ranch sauce, bourbon-infused Whiskey River BBQ Sauce, onion straws, American cheese, and lettuce on a sesame seed bun.\nTaco Tavern Double (a limited time item): Two patties topped with fresh guac, crunchy tortilla strips, pepper Jack cheese, lettuce, and salsa.\nSir Acha Tavern Double: Two patties with sriracha onion straws, spicy aioli, American cheese, tomato, lettuce, and pickles on a sesame seed bun.\nRed's Tavern Double: Two patties, Red's Secret Tavern Sauce, American cheese, tomato, and lettuce.\nSmoky Jack Tavern Double: Topped with house-made, bourbon-infused Whiskey River BBQ Sauce, pepper Jack cheese, pickles, red onions, lettuce, and mayonnaise.\nAll five combos typically cost $6.99 each, if you're wondering just what kind of deal you're getting. The offer is good for dine-in and to-go orders only, and not available for online orders. Red Robin also clarifies that it'll accept valid ID from any educational professional or administrator (just make sure to bring it).\nStrangely enough, on the same day, Chipotle is also offering a free food deal to nurses. Now that's an appreciation day at least two professions can appreciate!", "It’s almost like the African Diaspora in reverse now at Club Timbuktu (520 E. Center St.) as the men behind the Jamaican Grill & Kitchen food truck have taken over the kitchen most days at a venue that long specialized in cuisine from Africa.\nSeveral entrées are available in belly-filling, eye-catching presentations of proteins and sides.\nA recent visit’s sampling of curried chicken and goat reveals a variety of heat in the spices between dishes. An angled cut of fried plantain acts as a slightly sweet starch alongside thick, short grains of white rice with red beans and a cabbage salad that’s like the halfway point between coleslaw (similarly cut and including carrot slivers) and sauerkraut (warm, but not fermented).\nIt’s good to see uniquely spiced, hearty Jamaican fare spread to Riverwest.", "One of the city's newest business ventures is hosting the Insider Preview from 4 p.m. to midnight through Saturday, April 23, at 207 N. Main St. Guests are invited to test the 120-tap beer system and meet up with friends for dinner and drinks. The restaurant is offering a free appetizer to patrons in the form of Scotch Eggs, hard-boiled eggs wrapped in sausage meat and then fried or baked.\nStart the conversation, or Read more at MLive.com.", "Over the past seven years, chef Wade Hageman has become well-known for his two farm-to-table Encinitas restaurants: Blue Ribbon Artisan Pizzeria and Craftsman New American Tavern.\nNow, he and his wife, Kristi, have added four more Encinitas dining and drinking destinations to their list - and they're all under the same roof. Last week, Hageman Restaurant Group put the finishing touches on Open House Food + Drink, a four-in-one restaurant/bar concept on South Coast Highway.\nOpen House has two kitchens, two indoor dining rooms, two bars and a central outdoor covered patio that's dog- and kid-friendly.\nThe first and largest concept is Asian Kitchen, which serves a variety of Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Korean and Hawaiian dishes. The second is The Crafty Egg, which serves brunch, breakfast and lunch seven days a week.\nSaltwater is a \"pop-up\" bar concept that Hageman hosts on Friday and Saturday nights, where he makes raw seafood dishes to complement more than 100 brands of tequila. And Driftwood Tavern is a beachy cocktail bar that serves salads, burgers and flatbreads.\nThe Hagemans have gradually opened each of these new concepts one by one since May, with the final piece, Driftwood, debuting this past weekend.\nHageman said he got the idea to create a multi-concept restaurant/bar after exploring the vacant 7,000-square-foot space, which was originally built to house a colony of artist galleries around a central patio. Instead, it became the home of El Callejon Taqueria, which closed last January after 22 years.\nWith two kitchens and multiple stand-alone rooms, Hageman said he thought the venue could host a variety of restaurants and bars with its combined staff of 35. Asian Kitchen and Driftwood, which are situated side by side, have the same late afternoon/evening hours but separate kitchens. Crafty Egg uses Driftwood's dining room and kitchen in the morning and early afternoon hours. And Saltwater is set up in its own enclosed restaurant/bar space.\nTo reach all four spots, diners and drinkers walk through the same front door and Hageman said they're usually \"blown away\" by what they see inside. It's similar to the popular food hall concept at Liberty Station, but in this case it's all run by the same owners.\n\"We want to offer something for all tastes,\" he said. \"Not everyone wants Asian food every night of the week and not everyone wants a burger. There's a lot of freedom here. People can bar hop and grab an appetizer on one side, and then have a different experience 10 steps away. People are making a whole evening out of it.\"\nSince 2006, when Hageman was the chef for the now-defunct Blanca restaurant in Solana Beach, he's been known for making everything from scratch, including his own cheese, house-cured bacon, custom-ground burger meat and salted caramel butterscotch pudding (which is so popular it's served at all Hageman restaurants).\nHis sous chef and close friend at Blanca was Marlaw Seraspi, a native of the Philippines. When Blanca closed in 2011, Seraspi and his Hawaiian-born wife moved to Sacramento. But Hageman lured him back in 2013 to run the kitchen when he opened Craftsman Tavern. Hageman promised Seraspi that if he'd stick around, the next restaurant they opened would spotlight Asian fare in his honor.\nThe menu at Asian Kitchen crosses many cultures. There are Japanese raw fish and ramen dishes, Chinese wok dishes, Korean ribs, Hawaiian poke and Filipino adobo chicken wings.\n\"It's a true collaboration,\" Hageman said. \"If Marlaw feels passionate about something it goes on the menu and if I'm passionate about something, it goes on the menu, too. We do everything together.\"\nSo far, the shaking beef bowl and pork-fried rice dishes are the top-sellers at Asian Kitchen. Crafty Egg has a playful menu with Cap'n Crunch French toast, gourmet burgers, loaded Bloody Marys and $5 mimosas. Saltwater has different raw dishes each night, including crudo, ceviche, carpaccio and sashimi. And Hageman said newly opened Driftwood will be known for its original cocktails and its house burgers and flatbreads.\nOpen House Food + Drink\nThe Crafty Egg (breakfast, brunch and lunch): 8 a.m.-3 p.m. daily\nAsian Kitchen (poke, wok dishes, ramen, plated entrees): 4-9:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays; 4-10:30 p.m. Fridays/Saturdays; 4-9 p.m. Sundays\nDriftwood Tavern: (beachy cocktail bar, burgers and flatbreads): 4-9:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays; 4-10:30 p.m. Fridays/Saturdays; 4-9 p.m. Sundays\nSaltwater (pop-up tequila and raw bar): 5-9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays\nWhere: 345 S. Coast Highway 101, Encinitas\nPhone: (760) 452-2555\nOnline: openhousefooddrink.com\npam.kragen@sduniontribune.com", "Cincinnati Burger Week returns July 16-22, and welcomes six new participants in the fourth-annual event that dishes up $5 burgers city-wide.\nNew restaurants for 2018 include The Birch in Terrace Park, B&A Street Kitchen, Biscuits to Burgers at Rivercenter, Kitchen 1883, Frenchie Fresh and Wahlburgers.\nDuring the event, hosted by CityBeat, a total of 70 area restaurants will serve up $5 burgers alongside featured beers from Braxton Brewing Company and specialty cocktails featuring Jack Daniels, both sponsors of the event. Get at least three stamps on your \"burger passport\" and be entered to win a grill and \"ultimate grill-out party\" courtesy of the Ohio Beef Council.\nCincinnati Burger Week is again partnering with Childhood Food Solutions to raise awareness about childhood food insecurity throughout the week.\nA launch party takes place Wednesday, July 11, from 5:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. at Braxton Brewery, where attendees can pick up and receive their first stamp in their Burger Week passport with the purchase of a beer. Live music, giveaways, and burger samples from select restaurants also will be on hand.\nHere is the full list of participating restaurants:\nAnderson Pub & Grill\nAt 80 Market Gourmet\nB&A Street Kitchen\nBiscuits & Burgers at Rivercenter\nThe Brown Dog Cafe\nBRU Burger Bar\nBucket Heads\nBuffalo Wings & Rings\nBurgerFi\nBurgers & Crafts Shakes and Fries\nBurger Brothers\nChandler's Burger Bistro\nChapter\nDrake's\nChart House\n50 West Brewing Co.\nFlipside\nFlip Daddy's\nFreddy's Steakburgers\nFrenchie Fresh\nGrandview Tavern\nGabby's Cafe\nHang Over Easy\nHouse of Orange\nKeystone Bar & Grill\nKaze\nKitchen 1883\nLadder 19\nMackenzie River\nMacaron Bar\nMartino's On Vine\nMOTR Pub\nMolly Malone's\nMount Adams Pavillion\nMurray's Wings\nThe National Exemplar\nNation\nOakley Pub & Grill\nParkers Blue Ash Tavern\nRivertown Brewery & Barrel House\nPrime\nSalem Gardens\nThe Sandbar\nSammy's Craft Burgers & Beers\nSlatts Pub\nSmoke Justis\nTavern on the Bend\nTela Bar + Kitchen\nTickle Pickle\nThe Birch in Terrace Park\nTres Belle\nWashington Platform\nTrio\nWillie's\nWahlburgers\nLearn more at CincinnatiBurgerWeek.com.", "A new bar, offering pizza and more, has opened up shop in the neighborhood. Located at 711 Main St., Unit 1 in downtown Houston, the new arrival is called BirdDog Saint The restaurant was previously known as Springbok, which specialized in South African fare, Eater Houston reports . Now, the restaurant specializes in elevated American fare, including small plates, sandwiches and pizzas. There's also a raw bar for seafood lovers.On the menu, look for a shrimp and pesto pizza, Texas redfish with vegetables and Meyer lemon beurre blanc, and a watermelon salad with cucumber and mint.For drinks, look for a variety of cocktails, craft beers and wine.With a 4.5-star rating out of six reviews on Yelp so far, the fresh arrival has been warmly received by patrons.Igby D., who was among the first Yelpers to review the new spot on April 20, said, \"If you want a nice personal gourmet pizza, you have to try what they have here, the new all-day menu is great. Sandwiches, small plates, raw bar -- and if you're really hungry, you can never go wrong with the saintly chicken.\"And Dale M. said , \"Best folks on Main! I love these guys' craft selection of beers and the wings are the best I've ever had! The upstairs space and patio are the most spacious downtown; I've held events for my company here.\"Interested? Stop by to welcome the new business to the neighborhood. BirdDog Saint is open from 11 a.m.-midnight on Monday-Thursday and 11 a.m.-2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. (It's closed on Sunday.)", "After closing for two months this year, the Krocks Pub at the Shepherd Hills Golf Club in Lower Macungie Township has emerged with a new look, a new owner and a new name: Foundation Tavern.\nRobert Ashford, who operated the Locust Valley Golf Club in Upper Saucon Township, has turned the spot from a local sports bar into more of a restaurant.\nThe revamped menu includes some bar room staples like wings and nachos but has some out-of-the-box choices like Southern-style pierogies that are drenched in cream gravy and brisket cheesesteak, a smoky and upscale take on the Philly classic.\nFoundation also has a full list of entrees that verge on fine dining rather than sports den, including a 16-ounce tomahawk ribeye, grilled pork chops, and signature ribs \"slow cooked to fall off the bone.\" For vegetarians there's The Bogey, a black bean burger, and for the more adventurous, The Mulligan, a bison BBQ burger. There is a wine and cocktail menu, as well as a small selection of big name and craft beers. The restaurant also allows for online ordering and has daily features including wing nights and drink specials.\nSetting and decor: You have to go down a flight of steps to get to the tavern. I expected something dimly lit, similar to how Krock's Pub had been, but was pleasantly surprised to find a bright and inviting space in its place. The space is a modernized bar and restaurant. The bar seats around 30, and has ample televisions to keep tabs on whatever games are going on. A combination of tables and booths, in the bar area and in a section separated by a wall with blinds, can hold a large crowd. Slate gray tabletops match with monochrome walls and an open, industrial-looking black ceiling and lighting. Along with stone walls, a hardwood floor and dashes of light wood, it has a contemporary but relaxed look. Foundation also features \"The Hut,\" an outdoor area with a volleyball court, tables with umbrellas, and another large, spacious bar under an awning.\nAppetizers: To start I got the Foundation cheese sticks ($6.99), which are described as \"garlic bread coated provolone cheese, fried to golden brown.\" I took this to mean it was some sort of interesting take on cheese bread, but instead they were basically plain mozzarella sticks. Regardless, they were fine and plentiful for the price.\nI wanted to take a meal home, so I decided to try Foundation Tavern's \"signature dry rub\" wings ($9.99 for 10) to enjoy with football later that evening. They were cooked perfectly and the dry rub offered a nice spicy flavor without the mess of traditional sauces. (The restaurant does offer regular wing sauces in mild, hot, honey BBQ, garlic parm, and hot & honey.) I really enjoyed these and would give them another go.\nEntree: I got the Pig Man on Campus ($11), a pulled pork sandwich topped with hot slaw and honey BBQ sauce served on a jalapeno cheddar bun, with chips on the side. The slaw was excellent and complemented the savory and smoky pulled pork, and the BBQ sauce added a touch of both sweetness and tanginess. The jalapeno cheddar bun was, unfortunately, dry and crumbled when I was trying to eat the sandwich, so I ditched it and ate the meal like a platter. The chips were made in-house and were brown, well-seasoned and tasty.\nDessert: The dessert pretzel bites ($7) were pieces of Bavarian pretzel coated in cinnamon sugar and doused in a powdered sugar sauce. This was part of my takeout order so they gave me the sugar sauce on the side but omitted the chipped cream and caramel drizzle toppings. This really satiated my sweet tooth. The portion was big, so it's definitely a dish to share with others, and worth it for the price.\nService: I sat at the bar and the bartender wasn't chatty but still friendly. My food was delivered fast - parts of it too fast, actually. My entree arrived not 30 seconds after my cheese sticks.\nBottom line: The Foundation Tavern is a new and welcome twist on the former Krock's Pub that makes great use of the space inside and out. If you're looking for a place to watch sports or just grab a casual dinner, the new tavern can play both roles. Dinner for one and a takeout meal was $42.08.\nDETAILS\nFoundation Tavern\n1160 S. Krocks Road, Wescosville, Lower Macungie Township\n610-391-0648, foundationtavern.com\nHours: 10 a.m.-2 a.m. Mon.-Sat., 10 a.m.-midnight Sun.\nPrices: Appetizers: $4.99-$13; salads: $2.99-$14; sandwiches and burgers: $10-$16; entrees: $14.99-$24; desserts: $5-$8.\nBar: Yes\nCredit cards: Yes\nHandicapped accessible: Yes\nLocation: At the Shepherd Hills Golf Club approximately 3/10 of a mile south of Route 222/Hamilton Boulevard. Parking in lot.\nGlenn Koehler is a freelance writer. He attempts to remain anonymous during restaurant visits.\njodi.duckett@mcall.com\nTwitter @goguidelv\n610-820-6704", "Hannibal Buress loves our mild sauce. Bob Odenkirk loves our winters (really). Bill Kurtis loves the Billy Goat. And our writers and contributors love 64 more things about the city. Chicago magazine counts the ways.\nChicago State doesn’t have a win. It doesn’t have an athletic director. Some games it only has six players. But they keep going. The New York Times profiles Angela Jackson.\nIncreasingly, it’s private companies that do, thanks to the privatization of services. And Chicago’s at the heart of the trend. Talking Points Memo traces its evolution.\nLots of politicians and bureaucrats are responsible. But one man has been a constant. Reuters gets to the heart of Michael Madigan.\nA retired reporter is trying to find trends in unsolved murders, including why so many go unsolved. Closer to home there are a lot of them, and he’s having trouble even getting the data. Bloomberg Businessweek profiles Thomas Hargrove.\nIt gives him freedom, which he’s turned into a huge audience, which buys the merch that he actually makes his money from. Quartz explains.\nIn 2014, 52.4 million tons of cargo traveled the lake. That’s 60 percent less than in 1970. WBEZ explores the possibilities.\nMusic saved Tim Kinsella, even if he doesn’t always make that music easy for fans and critics. Noisey looks back at the band.\nThey’re underinsured at higher rates than the general population. The ACA made it possible for many to get treatment and make a living with their craft. What happens next? The Reader surveys local artists about the issue.\nThey came from chaos, looking for stability. But after the president’s executive order on immigration, the future looks uncertain again. Chicago magazine talks with immigrants from each country.\nShare", "A new Ethiopian spot has opened its doors in the neighborhood. The new addition to Greenway/Upper Kirby, called Blue Nile , is located at 3030 Audley St.This new spot--which has another Houston location at 9400 Richmond Ave.--specializes in traditional Ethiopian fare served with injera bread made from 100 percent teff.On the menu, expect to see vegetarian dishes likered lentil stew simmered in berbere sauce, spices, garlic, ginger and green peppers;split peas cooked with oil, onion and flavored with spices; andfresh tomato, olive oil, jalapeno, and bell pepper mixed with injera pieces.Switching over to meat and fish entrees, look forminced lamb tripe, lamb liver and lean top round beef sauteed with spiced butter and mitmita; chicken breast cubes in gravy sauteed with onions, herbs and spices; and deep-fried croaker fish served with rice and salad.Rounding things out are a variety of coffee drinks, Ethiopian tea, bottled beer, a selection of wine, and baklava for dessert. (You can check out the full menu here .)Blue Nile has just two reviews on Yelp, which give it a five-star rating thus far.Ibrahim H., who was the first Yelper to review the new spot on January 6th, said: \"The food is absolutely authentic and delicious. The aroma of the Ethiopian coffee is powerful and satisfying. Highly recommend this! Would recommend the samosas and the chicken platter.\"Blue Nile is now open at 3030 Audley St., so stop in to try it for yourself.", "Cowboy Ranch Tavern Double\nNew Limited-Time Burgers and Finest Milkshakes Highlight The Gourmet Burger Authority’s Spring Menu\nGreenwood Village, CO (RestaurantNews.com) The warmer weather isn’t the only thing to look forward to this spring! For a limited time, now through June 24, Red Robin Gourmet Burgers and Brews (Red Robin) guests can wrangle up a Cowboy Ranch Tavern Double and The Grand Brie at restaurants nationwide. The southern-inspired Cowboy Ranch Tavern Double is a flavor-packed burger that features two fire-grilled patties, topped with bourbon-infused Whiskey River® BBQ Sauce, ranch, crispy onion straws, American cheese and lettuce on a sesame seed bun. The Grand Brie, an award-winning burger from the 2017 South Beach Wine and Food Festival making its grand entrance to Red Robin’s Finest menu, features a fire-grilled, half-pound Black Angus burger with melted Brie cheese, balsamic fig jam, crispy bacon, fresh arugula and mayo on a brioche bun.\nThe Grand Brie\n“Experimenting with new flavors and pushing burger boundaries is what defines Red Robin,” said Dana Benfield, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Red Robin. “The addition of the Cowboy Ranch Tavern Double and The Grand Brie showcases our menu innovation and versatility at both ends of the spectrum, from our value-focused Tavern menu to our elevated Finest menu!”\nRed Robin is also elevating its popular milkshake lineup with the addition of two new, indulgent offerings. The Chocolate Hazelnut Bliss is a blend of chocolate hazelnut spread and cocoa crisps topped with velvety, chocolate whipped cream and dark chocolate Fruffles®. The Silver Spoon S’mores blends crispy, toasted mini marshmallows and graham cracker crumbs drizzled with chocolate syrup and topped with whipped cream and decadent fudge-dipped graham crackers.\nIsland Heat Wings\nA new appetizer springing into Red Robin restaurants is the sweet and spicy Island Heat Wings, tender and crunchy all-white chicken wings tossed in sweet mango chili sauce, topped with seared pineapple, fresh jalapenos and minced parsley and served with Yukon kettle chips. Red Robin is also introducing a Strawberry Basil Lemonade, to pair with any of the new spring menu offerings, as well as a Strawberry Basil Margarita and White Spanish Sangria for Guests 21 and over.\nFor more information about Red Robin’s spring promo menu items or to find the nearest Red Robin restaurant, visit www.redrobin.com. To sign up for the Red Robin Royalty loyalty rewards program, visit www.redrobin.com/royalty.\nAbout Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, Inc. (NASDAQ: RRGB)\nRed Robin Gourmet Burgers, Inc. (www.redrobin.com), a casual dining restaurant chain founded in 1969 that operates through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Red Robin International, Inc., and under the trade name, Red Robin Gourmet Burgers and Brews, is the Gourmet Burger Authority , famous for serving more than two dozen craveable, high-quality burgers with Bottomless Steak Fries® in a fun environment welcoming to guests of all ages. At Red Robin, burgers are more than just something guests eat; they’re a bonding experience that brings together friends and families, kids and adults. In addition to its many burger offerings, Red Robin serves a wide variety of salads, soups, appetizers, entrees, desserts and signature beverages. Red Robin offers a variety of options behind the bar, including its extensive selection of local and regional beers, and innovative adult beer shakes and cocktails, earning the restaurant a VIBE Vista Award for Best Beer Program in a Multi-Unit Chain Restaurant. It’s now easy to take Red Robin anywhere with online ordering for to-go and Gourmet Burger Bar catering pickups through Yummm2Go. There are more than 560 Red Robin restaurants across the United States and Canada, including Red Robin Express® locations and those operating under franchise agreements. Red Robin…YUMMM®! Connect with Red Robin on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.", "A new bar has opened its doors in the neighborhood. Located at 2803 White Oak Dr. in The Heights, the fresh addition is called Bobcat Teddy's Ice House This newcomer--with owner Ted Baker of Revelry on Richmond at the helm--is the highly anticipated replacement for Jimmy's Ice House, which operated in the space for nearly 75 years and closed this past July.At Bobcat Teddy's, Baker has kept a similar selection of bottled beer on hand, and hasn't changed the prices. He also introduced a cocktail program with signature whiskey-based drinks.There's no food on the menu just yet. However, for special weekend events, expect to see barbecue from Chapman House Smoked Meats on the patio, along with live music.The new bar has gotten good reviews thus far, with a 4-star rating out of three reviews on Yelp.Andrea R., who was among the first Yelpers to review the new spot on December 21st, said: \"So this is is the new and improved Jimmy's Icehouse. Patio has been redone and looks great! No more falling through the old boards or walking on pavement. Hard liquor is served with cool new cocktails to try.\"Yelper Leslie R. added : \"OK, Jimmy's fans, come check this place out. Sure, there are millennials and craft beer, but it is still a good bar. They still have your basic domestics for $3. Bar and patio have the same layout.\"Swing on by to take a peek for yourself: Bobcat Teddy's Ice House is open daily from 10am-2am.", "SALEM, Mass. – They say there’s no place like home, and at the Olde Main Street Pub in Salem, Massachusetts that statement remains true. For a while, this place was much like a second home to present owners Tim Caldwell and Kieran O’Neill.\n“We actually worked here together about 12 years ago when it was another restaurant, McSwiggans,” Tim reminisced. “We balance each other out very well. He sees things I don’t see. Also, I see things that he doesn’t see as well.”\nConnect With Phantom: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram\nSo, when the opportunity came up to get the band back together and reclaim their old stomping grounds, they jumped at the chance.\n“So many people wanted to come back,” Kieran said. “All the regular from the McSwiggans days came back. That to me was just awesome.”\nThey’ve re-created the space to be a place that will make you feel at home as well, with comfortable booths, a cozy fireplace and an all-around casual vibe.\n“The whole idea behind Old Main Street Pub was to have a local neighborhood place that’s more or less Kieran and I’s living room, and dining room as well,” Tim said. “Where everyone is welcome.”\n“It’s kind of a place where you can just come in, put your feet up, and even just have a beer, glass of wine, whatever you want,” Kieran added.\nThe food that Tim is cooking is way beyond what you’d expect to find in your typical tavern. There are Sicilian Meatballs served on crostini in a tomato basil cream sauce, and addictive smoked gouda and goat cheese fritters served with lemon aioli.\n“When you pop it in your mouth you get that nice crunch on the outside,” Tim described. “You’re going to get that initial bite from the smoked gouda, and then the tang form the goat cheese on the back end. The grilled tomatoes compliment that very well, and also lemon aioli. People love them.”\nThe Korean Style Duck Wings come served with Kimchi, and the Surf and Turf sliders pair crab cakes with pulled pork, for an unlikely but tasty duo.\n“We have gotten a lot of raised eyebrows when that came in,” Kieran recalled, “but I’ve also gotten a lot of people that said, it’s probably one of the best mates that they’ve ever tasted.”\nEntrees at Olde Main Street are impressive, from the Roasted Pork Tenderloin to the ultra-crispy Beer Battered Haddock. There are fork-tender short ribs that are braised for hours, and comforting burrata raviolis served in a tomato lemon cream sauce with a balsamic drizzle. Since the North Shore is steak tip country, Tim brought back a time-tested recipe.\n“It’s the same exact steak tips from when Kieran and I worked together 12 years ago. They were such a hit then, I couldn’t change it.”\nMade with a special cut of meat, these tips are topped with a flavorful Guiness Mushroom demi glaze, and have a cult like following.\n“We are known for our steak tips,” Kieran agreed. “I can guarantee you that you come in, and you have the steak tips here, you will come back again for more.”\nIf you can fit in some more, there’s no better way to end your meal than with some Bread Pudding.\n“We actually use a brioche, the same roll that we used for the burger, just a very simple custard, some fresh vanilla, pop it in the oven about 45 minutes until she puffs up,” Tim described. “She’s a beautiful, beautiful, simple bread pudding.”\nSo if you’re looking for a place to warm up by the fire with a cold one, or to fill your belly with some hot food, set your GPS for Olde Main Street (just not literally, because it’s actually on Essex Street).\n“I stand behind everything that we do here: the staff, the food, the atmosphere, the beer list, the cocktail list. I stand behind everything because I know it’s what people like,” Kieran concluded.\nYou won’t find Olde Main Street Tavern on Main Street. It’s actually located at 121 Essex Street in Salem, and online at oldemainstreetpub.com.\nWatch Phantom Gourmet on Saturdays and Sundays at 10:30 and 11 a.m. on myTV38.", "FAIRVIEW PARK, Ohio -- What was once a speakeasy is now a favorite local hang out among Clevelanders throughout the area.\nGunselman's Tavern is home to a variety of drinks patrons can come in and enjoy, but they can also indulge in some of the bar's specialty burgers.\nCleveland's Best reporters Kaylee Remington and Yadi Rodriguez along with comedian Mike Polk visited Gunselman's Tavern Monday. The tavern is a Top 20 contender in Cleveland's Best Burger contest.\nThe winner is going to be decided by you, the readers. You can vote in the poll found at the bottom of this post until 9 a.m. May 15.\nGunselman's Tavern\nLocation: 21490 Lorain Road, Fairview Park, OH 44126\nPhone: (440) 331-5719\nWebsite: www.gunselmans.com\nSocial media links: https://www.facebook.com/gunselmans, Twitter: @GunselmansTav, Instagram: @gunselmanstavern\nAt each of the Top 20 finalist restaurants we all sampled five beef burgers: A plain burger, a burger chosen by the restaurant, two burgers chosen by Cleveland's Best reporters Kaylee Remington and Yadi Rodriguez and a burger selected by Cleveland's Best celebrity host, comedian Mike Polk.\nPLAIN BEEF BURGER\nMike Polk says: Solid, good texture and good seasoning.\nKaylee Remington says: Nice smoky flavor. Juicy burger.\nYadi Rodriguez says: Tasty, a burger that you can eat plain without any toppings and still tastes great.\nCleveland's Best manager Kristen Davis says: Thick, has grill taste, meat is well packed.\nRESTAURANT'S CHOICE\nMushroom Swiss - Sauteed mushrooms and grilled onions with swiss cheese.\nPolk says: Perfectly cooked.\nRemington says: Not a huge fan of mushrooms but the burger was good. Thick burger.\nRodriguez says: Really good texture, mushrooms cooked just right, cheese melted perfectly.\nDavis says: Meaty, big burgers, mild cheese and mushrooms. The burger shines.\nREMINGTON'S CHOICE\nBuffalo style - Gunselman's house buffalo sauce, blue cheese slaw, diced tomato\nPolk says: Nice contrast with tomato's.\nRemington says: The buffalo sauce and blue cheese combined was delicious. I love buffalo sauce so I enjoyed it on the burger.\nRodriguez says: Good combination of tomatoes and blue cheese. The tomato really helps take the bite from the buffalo sauce.\nDavis says: Tomato adds a nice touch. Spice lingers and medium heat.\nRODRIGUEZ'S CHOICE\nHickory bacon BBQ - Gunselman's BBQ sauce, hickory bacon, cheddar, onion straws.\nPolk says: Great bacon, sauce was great.\nRemington says: Bacon was crispy and thick, BBQ sauce was sweet and complimented the burger well.\nRodriguez says: Loved the bacon, thick and just the right amount. The BBQ sauce was just the right amount.\nDavis says: Sweet sauce, nice bite to it. Thick bacon.\nPOLK'S CHOICE\nBlack & Blue - Cajun dry rub, blue cheese butter, onion straws and A1 sauce (housemade)\nPolk says: Amazing! Life-changing, perfect. Sauce was great.\nRemington says: A1 sauce was amazing! Love that it's homemade.\nRodriguez says: The crunchy onion straws added a great texture, Nice thick burger.\nDavis says: Mellow cheese, Cajun flavor is lacking.\nMore about Gunselman's Tavern:\nOwner: John Caine, David Grace and Joe McDonough\nWhen did it open: December 11, 1936. John, David and Joe took over in Sept. of 2014.\nHow many different beef burgers are on the menu: Nine\nBun options: Brioche buns.\nBest seller: Just Plain Jane - A hand-packed burger from the Westside market.\nMost unique beef burger: Black & Blue - Cajun dry rub, blue cheese butter, onion straws and A1 sauce (housemade)\nPrices: burgers start at $9\nSpecials: Every Monday you can get the Plain Jane and a pint for $7\nHere are the important details on the final poll: Voting is open until 9 a.m. May 15. The big winner will be revealed later that day in a surprise Facebook Live video.\nWe invite you to vote hourly. The restaurants are listed in alphabetical order in the poll. Please make sure you scroll all the way down to see all the finalists. Also, you need to scroll all the way down and click the \"Submit\" button in order for your vote to be counted.\nNote: If you're viewing this on cleveland.com's mobile app, you need to click here to see the poll and to vote.", "Inside Bosscat Kitchen in River Oaks. Photo by Daniel Ortiz\nGlass Wall, the 11-year-old upscale Heights eatery that shuttered in June to rebrand into a new casual restaurant apparently won't be rebranding into a new restaurant at all. Bosscat Kitchen & Libations, the River Oaks eatery known for its whiskey selection, Fruity Pebbles French toast and a pretty great burger, has just announced that it's opening BCK: Kitchen & Cocktail Adventures at 933 Studewood later this fall.\nRelated Stories Taste Test: We Found The Best New Burger in Houston\nThe eatery will offer a menu that's a bit different than the one at Bosscat, mainly because it will focus solely on \"nostalgic American fare\" that you'd find on a dinner table in the '80s and '90s, back when owners John Reed, Leslie Nguyen, and Vinnie Capizzi were growing up.\n“We created this idea two years ago when we were still living in Newport Beach,\" owner John Reed says via a press release. \"But we never had a venue for it. The Heights is the perfect neighborhood for this type of creativity. It’s going to give us a great canvas to step outside the box.\"\nA rep for Bosscat tells the Houston Press that the owners of Glass Wall, Studewood Hospitality Group LLC, own the building, but that Bosscat has taken over the lease and will be operating BCK completely independently.", "Karl Fallenius has been working on getting his Owlbear Barbecue open at 2826 Larimer Street since last summer; the main delays have been from receiving the proper permits from the city, since the overall project doesn't exactly follow the standard out-of-box restaurant model. For one thing, Fallenius has two hand-built smokers made from empty 500-gallon propane tanks in the parking lot in front of the building. Or at least he did until earlier in the week, when two masked criminals stole the doors of one of the smokers, making it unusable.\nThe incident occurred before dawn on Monday, January 29, but Fallenius didn't discover it until Wednesday morning,when he was visiting the property. Immediately suspecting foul play, he called the police and also checked with his friends at neighboring Our Mutual Friend Brewing Company, which has a security camera on the outside wall of the brewery. After reviewing the recording, Fallenius came to the conclusion that the vandalism may have been an act of intentional sabotage.\nA white van was caught on surveillance video. Still from Our Mutual Friend video.", "A private island off the coast of Connecticut that hosted parties atteded by Marilyn Monroe and Barbra Streisand has hit the market for $8.7million.\nThe 2.7-acre Tavern Island in Norwalk, Connecticut, which was first inhabited by European settlers in 1651, is just an hour from New York City.\nJust a five-minute boat ride from the mainland, the showpiece of the property is the 6,000-square-foot stone manor, which is accompanied by a one-bedroom boat house; a tea house; a two-bedroom caretaker's cottage; and a maintenance shed.\nThe 2.7-acre, private Tavern Island off of the coast of Norwalk, Connecticut, has hit the real estate market for $8.7million\nJust a five-minute boat ride from the mainland, the property features a main house, as well as a a one-bedroom boat house; a tea house; a two-bedroom caretaker's cottage; and a maintenance shed\nThe 6,000-square-foot stone manor, however is the island's main attraction. It wasn't built until the 1930s, when screenwriter Lillian Hellman lived on the property\nThere are two private beaches on the private island, where residents can bring sailboats ashore when they're not in use\nThe property, which aslo has a 75-foot-long swimming pool was first listed around 2012 for an asking price of $12.9million, but the price has since decreased to $8.7million\nThe main home's three stories hold six luxurious bedrooms, two offices, a gym and a steam room. There is a stone fireplace and a cutting-edge kitchen on the ground floor.\nAs well as the island, the property comes with 0.51 acres of mainland space, which features a pier and apartment, listing agent Nancy Dauk said.\nThe property also boasts two private beaches and a 75-foot-long swimming pool.\nIt was first listed around 2012 for an asking price of $12.9million, but the price has since decreased to $8.7million.\nDespite the island being inhabited since the 1600s, the main home wasn't built until the 1930s, when it housed screenwriter Lillian Hellman.\nDuring the 1960s, Billie Rose, a Broadway lyricist, moved into the property, hosting parties that saw the likes of Monroe and Streisand attend.\nThe Tavern Island (its main home pictured above), which was first inhabited by European settlers in 1651, is just an hour from New York City\nDespite the main home being nearly 100 years old, the stone manor's interior appears to be completely renovated, with stylish appliances\nIn a living room in the house, a massive fireplace takes up almost an entire wall of the space, while wood-adorned walls fill the rest of the room\nDuring the 1960s, Billie Rose, a Broadway lyricist, moved into the property, hosting parties that saw the likes of Monroe and Streisand attend\nFrom a bedroom of the home, residents are able to have a stunning view of the water. The property is just a boat ride away from the main land\nRose, who penned classic songs including It's Only a Paper Moon, used to hold glamorous soirees there.\nToday, Dauk said, the home would make for the perfect second home, about an hour from New York City.\nThough the home has all the amenties for modern living, like running water, heating, electricity, internet and phone service, residents still feel a world away from the hustle and bustle of the city.\nDauk, of Halstead Connecticut LLC, said: 'The biggest surprise is when you step of the boat - you feel totally disconnected from the world. You feel like you are escaping from the pace of today's living.\n'It's not island living and roughing it; you have all the amenities you need. This is easy living, even in the winter.'\nSandy Falconer, a previous owner, spoke about the property to the New York Times in 1982.\nShe told the newspaper: 'Being out at sea away from the mainland seems to magnify everything - the changing of the seasons, the drama of the weather, the wildlife and even the colors.'\nThe island sits between the mainland of Norwalk, Connecticut, and two other, much larger, islands, Sheffield Island and Shea Island\nFrom the island, residents can view the stunning changes of the seasons in Connecticut, as leaves change color and the weather gets colder\nToday, Dauk said, the home, which also has a mainland property (pictured), would make for the perfect second home, about an hour from New York City.\nThough the home has all the amenties for modern living, like running water, heating, electricity, internet and phone service, residents still feel a world away from the hustle and bustle of the city", "The Elk Room, a speakeasy-inspired cocktail bar in Harbor East, was named one of the best bars in the country by Esquire magazine.\nPublished online today as “The Best Bars in America, 2018,” the article praises bartenders Shaun Stewart and Andrew Nichols, the two minds driving the cocktail menu.\n“Too many speakeasy-type places still reek of the Gatsby remake. The Elk Room, praise Leo, is not that bar. Grab one of the six bar seats and meet Shaun Stewart and Andrew Nichols. The duo make inspired drinks of and with nearly anything — Stewart once won a cocktail competition using Jägermeister,” the piece reads. As to what to order, the blurb recommends the Poe’s Raven.\nOpened in August, the Elk Room is the only Maryland bar to make Esquire’s list. Previously, other Baltimore establishments including Rye, the Brewer’s Art and Bad Decisions have been featured on Esquire’s previous Best Bars lists.\nRead The Baltimore Sun’s review of the Elk Room from December here.\nwesley.case@baltsun.com\ntwitter.com/midnightsunblog\nMORE MIDNIGHT SUN\nBest Baltimore bars 2017: Beer havens, skillful cocktails and everything in between\nMap: Maryland breweries and distilleries\nBaltimore Sun bar reviews", "New Times ' inaugural BurgerFest is set to arrive July 7.\nIf you like burgers, you have to come out to New Times' Burgerfest.\nOn Saturday, July 7, Soho Studios turns into the ultimate burger party. From 6 to 9 p.m., enjoy unlimited helpings of South Florida's best burgers, such as veggie varieties, traditional beef, fritas, and other creations.", "Bumstead Provisions will host a Crafty Cow popup on Friday, March 31 ahead of the burger restaurant’s move next door to 2675 S. Kinnickinnic Ave.\nThe popup, which runs from 10 p.m. - midnight, will feature a small burger menu by Bumstead/Crafty Cow chef Greg Gannaway and Vangaurd Chef Shay Linkus, as well as $3 tallboys and Revel Stoke Whiskey.\nCrafty Cow’s menu will feature over 15 signature “Jucy Lucy” style burgers, the Minneapolis style of cheese stuffed burgers. The menu will also include Crafty Cow’s award winning cheese curds.\nThe Great Milwaukee Project, a yearlong passion project of Mike Bodow and Devin Eichler focusing on inclusion, collaboration and philanthropy, will also be introduced that evening.", "A new spot to score burgers has made its debut in the neighborhood. Located at 723 Telephone Rd. in Greater Eastwood, the new addition is called Alfred's Burger House This newcomer specializes in fresh-ground steak burgers, deli sandwiches, salads and more.On the menu, expect to see burgers like \"Just a Burger\" with mayo, lettuce, tomatoes, onions and pickles; grilled chicken with bacon, American cheese and veggies; a \"Mexican Burger\" with burger patty, ham, cheese, avocado and a fried egg; and a Philly cheeseburger with grilled onions and peppers and provolone.Look for sandwiches like pastrami with house dressing and corned beef with sauerkraut. There are signature dogs on the menu, too, like \"Alfred's Chili Dog\" with cheese, fries, and bacon and a \"Mexican Dog\" topped with pico de gallo.Rounding things out are desserts like ice cream sundaes and three different flavors of milkshakes.With a 4.5-star rating out of three reviews on Yelp so far, Alfred's Burger House has been warmly received by patrons.Brandon H., who was among the first Yelpers to review the new spot on January 15th, said: \"I got the chicken burger, and it tasted very delicious! I'm happy these guys are in the neighborhood and definitely recommend this place to anyone looking for a great burger. Will be back!\"Yelper David L. added : \"This place has a lot of potential. I like the commitment to quality ingredients, nice burger options, good portion sizes, and reasonable price points. Will definitely be coming back.\"And Karina V. said : \"It's clean, simple, and has great customer service. I went with the simplest burger for my first visit, called 'Just a Burger.' The meat tasted great because it was well seasoned and it wasn't dripping in grease.\"Intrigued? Stop in to try it for yourself. Alfred's Burger House is open Monday-Thursday from 11am-9pm, Friday and Saturday from 11am-11pm, and Sunday from 11am-7pm.", "Braum’s will not by demolishing the Donnay Building on NW 50th near Classen Blvd. The metro-based restaurant and dairy chain wanted to build another location at the site of the old building that houses bars and a business. The Hilo Club, the Drunken Fry, Charlies Music, and the Classen Grill would all be torn down under the proposal.\nBraum’s has since withdrawn its request to rezone the property which would have allowed for the sale of the property. Braum’s recently failed to get enough votes from planning commissioners to send the proposal to city council.\nRed Oak LLC currently owns the building and did not return our phone calls about their plans moving forward.\nThose who organized opposition against the Braum’s plan are still working to save the building. They are hoping to work with Red Oak to find a buyer willing to repair the Donnay Building instead of flattening the structure. They are also working to give the building an historical distinction so it can’t be torn down.\n“Hilo was the first LGBTQ bar in Oklahoma City,” says Mark Faulk, who organized opposition to the Braum’s proposal. \"That has historic significance as well.\"", "Please enable Javascript to watch this video\nOnce upon a time, one of the more colorful patrons of the famous Pic-A-Lilli Inn was a one horned goat that liked to drink beer and eat cigarettes.", "Please enable Javascript to watch this video\nMILWAUKEE -- With the snip of scissors and an assist from a mariachi band, the newest burger bar in Milwaukee was open for business Monday, March 19.\n“Waiting for the customers to walk into the door and say, ‘hello, welcome to Oscar’s Winner’s Circle,'\" said Oscar Castañeda, who owns the restaurant with his wife, Elisabeth Stoeger.\nOscar’s Pub and Grill on Pierce St. has been a favorite since the couple opened it back in 2011. Oscar’s Winner’s Circle is just a couple of miles away on 38th and Burnham.\n“That’s our favorite burger place, and so we wanted to see how this is, and it’s just as good,\" patron Henry Rios said.\nJust as good, but not the same. The basic burger-and-beer concept is still intact, but the new place will have more Mexican influences on the menu.\n“We’re putting in chicharrón in the burger. We’re putting al pastor in the burger,\" said Castañeda.\nThere are also 40 beer taps, featuring a variety of local craft brews that help wash down the meal.\nIt took a lot of work to get the building, home of the former Winner’s Circle Bar, ready for opening day. Castañeda said they opened up the space with floor-to-ceiling windows and put in a brand-new kitchen – very tangible investment in this Burnham Park neighborhood.\n“He’s going to be employing people from the neighborhood and taking care of the neighbors around here, and hopefully bringing people – good people – into the neighborhood to spend their money,\" said Milwaukee Alderman Bob Donovan.\n“It makes me feel good to know that a local guy is offering this much hospitality to so many people,\" added Val Kupczak-Rios.\nOscar’s Winner’s Circle will be open seven days a week for lunch and dinner.", "If you're planning a lunch/dinner date with a friend or a loved one today you could do worse than head over to Sandymount.\nToday is American Independence Day and with the United States being the spiritual home of the burger, Bujo is putting on a great deal for the day that's in it.\nCustomers ordering the double version of the BuJo, Piquanté, Vegan or Veggie burger from the menu can avail of a second burger for free, as long as they order a side and either a soda, shake, beer or wine each.\nAs well as that, Bujo has also created 'The American Pie', a 4th of July-inspired milkshake which is available just for today, which is made of of Coolhull Farm ice cream with apple pie, peanut butter & jelly.\nCertainly enough to get the tastebuds tickling.\nREAD NEXT: Eddie Rockets Has Created These Donald Trump Burgers For The 4th Of July\nWe were targeted by Bloggers Unveiled last week, here's what it feels like... Subscribe to Before Brunch podcast here", "CLEVELAND, Ohio -- If you're a Top 20 contender in Cleveland's Best Burger contest, be prepared: visits began Monday.\nGunselman's Tavern, Buckeye Beer Engine and Smokin' Thyme Kitchen were the first to receive visitors during the first outing.\nAt each stop, reporters Kaylee Remington and Yadi Rodriguez, plus comedian Mike Polk, sampled five different burgers offered at the restaurant.\nThe restaurant also assembled sides they sell and a signature dish that they believe customers should try. Photos were taken and reviews were jotted down immediately after the taste testing.\nCheck out our Facebook Live videos during the visits below:\nGunselman's Tavern:\nBuckeye Beer Engine:\nSmokin' Thyme Kitchen:\nHere is the rest of the schedule. (Please note the times are approximate. If there are any changes, the info will be updated in this list).\nWednesday, April 25\n11 a.m.: Betty's Bomb Ass Burgers Food Truck at Perk Plaza (1717 E. 12th St., Cleveland)\n1 p.m.: Brickyard Bar & Grill (580 W. Lorain St., Oberlin)\n3 p.m.: Avon Brewing Company (37040 Detroit Road, Avon)\n5 p.m.: Hatfield's Goode Grub (16700 Lorain Ave., Cleveland)\nFriday, April 27\nNoon: Element 41 (141 Main St., Chardon)\n3 p.m.: Swensons (University Heights location at 14510 Cedar Road)\n5 p.m.: Stevenson's Bar & Grill (800 E. 200th St., Cleveland)\nWednesday, May 2\n11 a.m.: Gandalf's Pub & Restaurant (6757 Center Road, Valley City)\n1 p.m.: Check Please Cafe (597 Main St., Grafton)\n3 p.m.: Erie Burger Co. (32822 Walker Road, Avon Lake)\n5 p.m.: Post & Beam (11790 Snow Road, Parma)\nThursday, May 3\n10 a.m.: SWAT Food Truck at ADESA Auto Auction (210 E Twinsburg Road, Northfield)\nNoon: The City Diner (5109 Memphis Ave., Cleveland)\n2 p.m.: Hecks Cafe (2927 Bridge Ave., Ohio City)\nMonday, May 7\n11 a.m.: Craggy Bogland's (4857 Robinhood Dr., Willoughby)\n2 p.m.: Creekside Restaurant and Bar (8803 Brecksville Road, Brecksville)\n4 p.m.: Whitey's Booze N' Burgers (3600 Brecksville Road, Richfield)\nReaders determined these Top 20 burger joints by voting in the first round, which featured 86 restaurants. Now it's time for readers to vote to decide the ultimate winner. Scroll down to vote in the poll.\nWe invite you to vote hourly. The restaurants are listed in alphabetical order. Make sure you scroll all the way down to see all of the finalists. Also, you need to scroll all the way down and click the \"Submit\" button in order for your vote to be counted.\nNote: If you're viewing this on cleveland.com's mobile app, you need to click here to see the poll and to vote.\nRemember, voting will run until Tuesday, May 15 at 9 a.m. The big winner will be revealed later that day in a surprise Facebook Live video.", "The Elk Room, a speakeasy-inspired cocktail bar in Harbor East, was named one of the best bars in the country by Esquire magazine.\nPublished online today as “The Best Bars in America, 2018,” the article praises bartenders Shaun Stewart and Andrew Nichols, the two minds driving the cocktail menu.\n“Too many speakeasy-type places still reek of the Gatsby remake. The Elk Room, praise Leo, is not that bar. Grab one of the six bar seats and meet Shaun Stewart and Andrew Nichols. The duo make inspired drinks of and with nearly anything — Stewart once won a cocktail competition using Jägermeister,” the piece reads. As to what to order, the blurb recommends the Poe’s Raven.\nOpened in August, the Elk Room is the only Maryland bar to make Esquire’s list. Previously, other Baltimore establishments including Rye, the Brewer’s Art and Bad Decisions have been featured on Esquire’s previous Best Bars lists.\nRead The Baltimore Sun’s review of the Elk Room from December here.\nCAPTION Rapper Kendrick Lamar wrapped up a Pulitzer Prize win — and made history in the process. Lamar's \"DAMN.\" is the first nonclassical or jazz work to win the award, which comes with a $15,000 cash prize. Rapper Kendrick Lamar wrapped up a Pulitzer Prize win — and made history in the process. Lamar's \"DAMN.\" is the first nonclassical or jazz work to win the award, which comes with a $15,000 cash prize. CAPTION The actress talks \"Downton Abbey\" among other roles onstage at Maryland Hall on the last day of Annapolis Film Festival. The actress talks \"Downton Abbey\" among other roles onstage at Maryland Hall on the last day of Annapolis Film Festival.\nwesley.case@baltsun.com\ntwitter.com/midnightsunblog\nMORE MIDNIGHT SUN\nBest Baltimore bars 2017: Beer havens, skillful cocktails and everything in between\nMap: Maryland breweries and distilleries\nBaltimore Sun bar reviews", "Get Daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email\nWhether you like barbecue sauce or ketchup to dip your fries in, McDonald's has revealed why they have never served mayonnaise.\nThe reason why the fast food chain doesn't offer the dip is because chiefs say there isn't enough demand for it.\nMayonnaise fans need not be downhearted though as there's a secret menu hack that will allow you to get a pot of the sauce that you crave for your fries.\nSocial media is littered with McDonald's customers complaining and urging the fast food chain to start stocking sachets of mayonnaise in stores - and they have even started an online petition (that has 28 signatures already).\nA McDonald's spokesman told Cosmopolitan UK: \"What we offer in our restaurants is based on customer demand. We don’t currently have any plans for mayonnaise to be made available.\"\nHowever mayonnaise fans can get hold of their favourite sauce using the mysterious secret menu.\nSome customers say that they've been able to get their hands on the dip by asking a member of staff to fill a drinks lid with the mayonnaise-based sauce from the McChicken Burger.\nIt doesn't always work but if you're patient and polite, it could pay off.\nWHAT'S ON THE SECRET MENU AT MCDONALD'S?\nThe Monster Mac - Perhaps more aptly called the Bigger Mac, this gut stretching creation is simply a normal Big Mac - but with six extra beef patties shoved in.\nAccording to the Hack the Menu team, the burger is 'enough to satisfy a few people with hearty appetites or one hungry lumberjack' and can be ordered from any McDonalds for $6.49.\nThe two Cheeseburger meal - Does what it says on the tin, if you ask for this you can expect an extra cheeseburger alongside your fries and drink.\nThe All American - This simple offering consists of nothing more than a toasted burger bun containing a beef patty, ketchup and the often shunned gherkin. The snack is said to be one of the most popular items on the secret menu.\nFries with Big Mac sauce - Customers can simply ask for a small pot of the famous Big Mac secret sauce to dip their fries in, and, according to Hack the Menu, it's usually free.\nGrilled cheese - This is easily the most basic of the secret menu choices. A hamburger is stripped bare aside from the cheese and is then grilled. HackTheMenu.com urges the importance of getting it grilled.\nThe Land, Sea and Air burger - This enormous burger combines all three of McDonald's most favored patties including two beef burgers, a Fillet-O-Fish and a McChicken combined with however many buns you wish. However, Hack the Menu warn you will probably have to assemble it yourself.\nThe McGangBang - The somewhat crudely named McGangBang is said to be the most famous of the secret menu items. It combines a McDouble with a McChicken sandwich and sandwiches the two together.\nThe Neapolitan Shake - The three flavoured shake is one of the few beverages on the McDonald's secret menu. The shake blends the three classic flavours of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry in on cup to satisfy all cravings.", "Burgers are bigger, brawnier and more omnipresent than ever, boasting exotic add-ons, “proprietary” beef blends — and higher price tags. But it doesn’t mean they’re necessarily better than cheap, old-school, diner-style ground-chuck numbers.\nThat’s especially true when someone dolls up lame, Wagyu-blend patties with a salad bar’s worth of incompatible toppings that include cheap foie gras, portobello mushrooms, avocado and alfalfa sprouts, as at new Latin-fusion Tavo on Hudson Street.\nI grew up loving simple patties grilled to a succulent turn, like the $10.95 “classic cheese” at several Burger Heaven locations and the $9.42 cheeseburger at the Parker-Meridien hotel’s Burger Joint. Both are demure enough to be eaten by hand and immensely satisfying. By comparison, most of the new crop of mega-burgers — made with designer beef blends, topped with the kitchen sink and costing small fortunes — fall short. The weaker ones range from meh (some flavor but lacking in moisture) to miserable (neither flavor nor juice). The best are just too damn expensive. None could be comfortably hand-held and a few might best be consumed with a forklift.\nMost of the new breed rely on baroque, custom-tailored blends of chuck, short ribs and brisket, with wildly varying results. The year’s most celebrated new burger is at relaunched Chumley’s on Bedford Street. “I think it’s one of the greatest burgers in New York City,” boasted owner Alessandro Borgognone. “A burger worthy of [onetime Chumley’s customer Ernest] Hemingway, declared Bloomberg.com. “Bound to be the breakout star,” gushed GQ.com.\nAhem — the $25 grass-fed double patty top round (50 percent dry-aged) from Fleishers Craft Butchery tasted gray and character-less after we managed to find the damn thing under a mountain of toppings — a bone marrow, American cheese, crispy shallots and “secret sauce.”\nEven so, it whipped the buns off of Tavo’s $26 exercise in beef blandness. Avocado, a fatty-rich fruit, does not belong with even fattier-richer foie gras. Even if it did, nothing could elevate the meat from its built-in mediocrity.\nSeveral burgers I tried weren’t terrible, but seemed pointless when there were so many better dishes on the menu. At David Burke’s new Tavern62, a snore-inducing, too-dry $27 burger ($20 at lunch) was lost at sea amid Burke’s signature creative riffs like “angry lobster scramble” and “paella-style” red snapper.\nThe new Union Square Cafe’s $27, custom LaFrieda brisket/short rib blend on a brioche bun with Berkshire bacon and Beecher’s cheddar cheese was better, but still paled compared to the restaurant’s other offerings. Chef Carmen Quagliata’s at the top of his game with killer dishes that cost the same or little more, like duck-and-chanterelle pappardelle ($27) and arrestingly spiced chicken ($31). Why order a decent, but unspectacular, burger instead?\nSadly, the best of the high-priced field were the most high-priced. Truly grand was the relaunched Beatrice Inn’s 45-day-dry aged burger on a brioche bun, topped with red wine-caramelized onions and creamy, melted d’Affinois cheese. The remarkably sweet, 3-inch-tall giant is a worthy challenger to the town’s longtime reigning champ, Minetta Tavern’s $33 Black Label number permeated with clarified butter.\nBut chef Angie Mar’s Beatrice burger is $38. I balk at spending that much on a hamburger — and that’s without the addition of a duck egg and shaved black truffles, which will set you back $52.\nA few (relatively) lower-priced alternatives can be nearly as enjoyable. Minetta Tavern’s regular burger is nearly as delicious as the Black Label for just $25 — and it includes fries.\nAt Minetta owner Keith McNally’s new Augustine, the $27 Whiskey Burger boasts a compelling blend of brisket, short rib, hanger and chuck blend with a curiously smoky, forestlike complexion. It’s even more fun if you love whiskey, which permeates grilled onions and comes as a shot on the side for good measure.\nAlas, the baroque-burger boom shows no signs of letting up. “Crafted” burgers are popping up at more and more ambitious, new or relaunched restaurants, often where they don’t belong. At Dan Kluger’s new Loring Place, a cheeseburger was worth $19 — but it’s the least interesting thing to order on a “greenmarket” menu focusing on vegetables and fish.\nPat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors president Mark Pastore says that “300 [restaurants] in the city are now using our customized chop meat for hamburgers,” compared to maybe “30 or 40 just 10 or 15 years ago.”\nToo bad too many kitchens don’t know how to cook them to juicy perfection, but instead pile on a mountain of gimmicky toppings to make them interesting.", "A breeze of nostalgia will blow on Milwaukee as inhabitants get the chance to eat Big Boy hamburgers, 22 years after Wisconsin’s last Big Boy restaurant closed its doors. Ovation Sarah Chudnow, a retirement community in Mequon, will host a Big Boy Reunion, complete with classic food from the restaurant chain – double-decker burgers, onion rings and strawberry pies are on the menu that day. Dinner is $10 per person, reservations are required.\nThe evening will be animated by guest speakers Steve and Greg Marcus, respectively Chairman of the Board and CEO of The Marcus Corporation, owner of Big Boy restaurants. They will bring back the Big Boy magic to Milwaukee for one more night.\n“Marc’s Big Boy restaurants were an icon in Milwaukee for many years. It was one of the most popular franchises we’ve ever been a part of and we had a lot of fun with it,” said Steve Marcus in a press release. “We are thrilled that the Ovation Sarah Chudnow community has chosen to celebrate this classic burger that is a delicious memory in the minds and taste buds of many.”\nPeople are encouraged to dig out their Big Boy mementos and join Ovation Sarah Chudnow members for a fun evening reliving the Big Boy days.\nWednesday, Aug. 9 at Ovation Sarah Chudnow (10995 N. Market St., Mequon). Dinner at 6 p.m. Program at 7 p.m. For reservations, call 262-478-1500.", "CTV Vancouver\nStill on the fence about who to vote for in next month's provincial election? A New Westminster burger joint is once again inviting customers to vote with their gut in a \"bun-official\" poll.\nBurger Heaven has designed three special hamburgers representing the leaders of B.C.'s major political parties, and is tallying up the purchases to determine who's the most popular candidate – in burger form, anyway.\nAs of Monday morning, the John Horgan Burger led the pack with 286 votes, followed by the Andrew Weaver Burger at 243 and the Christy Clark Burger at 186.\nThe NDP's leader's hamburger is described as a \"Lean-to-the-Left\" beef patty topped with \"strong o(u)nions,\" mozzarella and \"H-organ-ic mango habanero sauce.\"\n\"Lettuce lead and we'll Relish the opportunity to drain some fat out of the liberally cut slice of Bacon and make sure that if this burger eater 'works hard he or she is paid a fair wage,'\" reads Burger Heaven's description.\nWeaver's burger features organically grown tomato and lettuce, and, like his B.C. Green Party, has \"come a long way to 'ketchup' in the political kitchen of popularity,\" the restaurant said.\nCurrently in last place, Clark's hamburger boasts a “Lean-to-the-Right” patty, a Liberal slab of cheddar cheese, special sauce and milder o(u)nions.\n\"According to the proverbial 'pipeline' this very well-seasoned burger also wants to lead again so as to continue to stimulate the economy and ensure that the minimum wage is raised for [Burger Heaven] servers,\" the eatery wrote.\nBurger Heaven, which has been holding election polls for over two decades, also lets customers cast a secret ballot if they'd prefer to order off the regular menu.\nAs such, there are currently 66 \"bun-decided\" voters in the poll.", "A well-dressed crowd made the official grand opening of Vienna Kitchen & Social House in Roslyn a busy occasion Thursday night.\nThe new restaurant and lounge, for years the restaurant and lounge Chalet, rolled out a red carpet to its entrance, and guests arrived in high capacity, filling the dance floor and terrace, as well as both its bars, partying late into the evening.\nOne might think the song “Vienna Calling” by the late Falco was behind the name, but, as new owner Matt Prince explains, it’s the Billy Joel song “Vienna” that inspired the venue’s new moniker. Joel’s presence is felt, as well, with a large oil painting of him singing at a piano gracing the lounge’s wall.\nThe bones of Chalet are still in place; the downstairs pub area remains a rock-walled cozy bar, the upstairs a dining and dancing zone. New ownership has however put a fresh spin on what was, adding soft, colorful lights to illuminate the lower bar while whites, blacks and charcoal grays are the color scheme of the dimly lit higher floors.\nThe current menu, cultivated by Chef Frank Falgiano (formerly of Barrique in Babylon Village) is focused on small plates, featuring items like mini tuna tacos (served with sriracha aioli, scallions and fresh lime; $16), steamed chicken dumplings (over soba noodles; $12) and lobster guacamole (red pepper, tomato, red onion, lime juice; $15) among the lower-priced dishes.\nHigher-priced plates include lobster grilled cheese (smoked Gouda, scallions, red onion, mayo, truffle oil; $19), flat-iron steak (with sauteed spinach, fingerling potatoes; $21) and lamb chops (with red potatoes, asparagus; $22).\nadvertisement | advertise on newsday\nSeating is presented throughout the second floor, including in a pair of small, interconnected rooms (holding only two to three tables each) and all around the lounge area. However, when the weather is fair, guests may also dine outside on the tented terrace, or for a more exclusive feel head to the tiny third floor and eat in the loft, with just enough seating for a small party (open for walk-ins when available). Guests can also partake of the menu while in the ground-floor pub, dubbed “Uncle Steve’s Tavern,” which also serves as the entrance and order pickup point.\nNightlife is also be a factor at Vienna, featuring DJs spinning party music (a mix of disco, pop, rock and modern dance) on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturday nights, and live music on Thursdays (event scheduling is subject to change as the venue is still finalizing plans). The kitchen is also slated to serve food late regardless of what sort of party is under way (the last call time for food is also yet to be decided).\nVienna Kitchen & Social House: 1 Railroad Ave., Roslyn; 516-621-7975, viennaofroslyn.com" ]

[ "King Helü" ]

[ "Led Zeppelin", "LED backlighting", "an LED circuit or LED driver", "the Who", "a series of LEDs", "Who?", "Who Made Who", "Led Zeppelin IV", "Army", "Led Zeppelin III", "The Who by Numbers", "to prevent damaging the LED", "Betty Who", "The Who's Tommy", "Led Zeppelin II", "who is singing", "Who Dat", "Dr. Who", "Apple LED Cinema Display", "The Guess Who", "the Tartan Army", "Who You Are", "The Secretary of the Army", "the German army", "Who Is Fancy", "Tubeway Army", "Who's That Girl", "Secret Army", "An army junta", "The Man Who", "Dad's Army", "Army of Occupation" ]

[ "One of your answers was upvoted then accepted (taking your reputation to 26, triggering the message about gaining the chat privilege).\n\nHowever, the accept was very quickly reversed - and your reputation dipped back to 11 reputation, revoking the privilege in the process." ]

[ "All users have the privilege to comment on an answer starting with 1 reputation. You have the ability to create posts:\n\n\n Create Posts\n \n Privilege Type: Creation Privilege Awarded At: 1 Reputation\n \n What is asking and answering questions? The most basic privilege of\n all -- the right to ask a question, and the right to contribute an\n answer. This is generally available to everyone, regardless of\n reputation level.\n\n\nThis is available on the privileges page here: https://superuser.com/help/privileges/create-posts", "You acquire privileges by building up your reputation.\nThese concepts are discussed in the Help Center:\nWhat is reputation? How do I earn (and lose) it?\nand List of privileges you can earn.\nThe short version is: there are basically three ways to get reputation:\n\n\nFind questions that you can answer, and answer them.\nAsk new, intelligent, well-researched questions.\nThis is sometimes harder than writing answers.\nFind posts (questions and answers) with severe problems (typically in formatting or English)\nand edit them.", "You need at least 50 reputation to comment. If you do not have enough reputation, you will not see the add comment link. Most other privileges (e.g. view votes, vote to close, etc.) will also not display their link/button until you've earned the appropriate amount of reputation.", "Errare humanum est - it is human to err, and some times errors do sneak into our answers.\n\nThere's a few things you can do if you find an error in an answer. \n\n\nLeave a comment. Chances are the person whose answer contains errors is high reputation user and is frequently visiting this site ( like myself . . .and sometimes visiting too frequently :) They will see your comment and edit the answer.\nRequest assistance from high reputation users. You can do so in AskUbuntu chatroom or here on Meta site.\nIf you have sufficient reputation on the site and have editing privilege, you can correct the post yourself.\nIf you have flagging privilege, flag for moderator attention. That's least preferred solution, since our dear moderators are busy swinging ban hammers at misbehaving users as well as moving questions that are not related to Ubuntu :) and it would be shame to trouble them too much with trivial things ( at least IMHO ). However, as a last resort that's as good solution as any.\n\n\nAs for the 6 character limit, there's always a way to paraphrase a sentence, change grammar, and use synonyms for words to add up to the character limit without loosing the meaning. Remember: as long as your edit doesn't damage the meaning of the answer, your edit is good to go.", "The Skeptics site is still in public beta, and therefore has an adjusted privileges scale to compensate for the limited amount of high-rep users.\nThis is covered in the FAQ, where all the privileges are listed:\n\n(note that reputation requirements have been relaxed slightly for the duration of the public beta)\n\nSites that have just been launched and are still in private beta have even lower reputation thresholds.", "Since the post has been closed for more than five days, editing will not automatically send it to the reopen queue. If you don't have the privilege to vote to reopen, the best thing to do in my opinion is make a meta post (check!) or you could come into the main chatroom and raise the issue.\n\nThe help center has some further advice\n\nI've voted to reopen the question, so it's in the review queue now.", "You will be allowed to comment when your reputation will be at least 50, see here https://stackoverflow.com/privileges/comment", "Is the required reputation for privileges subject to change over time, maybe looking at statistics on the data of the user base?\n\nYes, possibly. I'm not sure whether privileges have ever been subject to retroactive changes but other parts of the system sure have, like the amount of reputation awarded to upvotes on questions.\n\nWho decides and manages these levels?\n\nSome of the many women, men, and... cacti? that make up The Man around here.\n\nCould it be managed by very high-reputation users?\n\nNot currently, no. It's probably not going to happen, either: historically, these kinds of decisions are not left to the user base.\n\nDid it already happen to change in the past?\n\nI don't know of an instance where it did, although it might have happened.\n\nIf it changes, what happens to the users who already have privileges, are they updated?\n\nJudging from current behaviour (when you lose rep and fall below a privilege level, you lose it again) I would speculate that the code's natural inclination at the moment would be that privileges would be re-calculated across the board.\nWhether that'll be what happens if and when such a change ever happens, will depend on how important they deem that one or the other be the case, I suppose.", "We allow only answers in the answer section, no exceptions. Once you have sufficient reputation, you'll be able to comment everywhere and downvote bad answers. \n\nA very important power that you get pretty early (15 reputation) is the ability to flag posts. If you're sure that an answer is malicious, flag it as needing moderator attention, and fully explain the situation and what you want done. If you're not so certain, you can ask about it in chat, which is open to anybody with 20 reputation or more. \n\nThere's also meta (right here!), which anybody with 5 reputation can participate in. It's perfectly acceptable to ask on meta for something to be done when you don't have sufficient privileges to do it yourself.", "Yes, you will lose privileges. \n\nSee https://serverfault.com/help/bounty\n\n\n If your new reputation brings you below the requirement for any\n privileges, you will lose access to those privileges.", "Why do we lose our privileges?\nI don't particularly like the top answer on the most famous question:\n\nWhat's the point of putting your reputation on the line for a bounty if there is no consequence of losing it?\n\nThis does not apply to privileges, so I have cut out reputation altogether. Much better!\n\nWhat's the point of a bounty?\nBounties are for users who really want to put their question in the spotlights to get it answered.\n\nYou don't get a lot for nothing here; so, as a consequence, it comes with a cost. Your hard earned reputation is the only thing you have to pay for the obligation, you literally lose your reputation. And because privileges are heavily associated with reputation, you lose them as well in the progress.\nIf we were to be really nice people, we could perhaps maintain them. But that introduces extra work and inconsistencies in the system. There is no longer a direct mapping between reputation and privileges (a low reputation user with mod tools?!) and they'd have to maintain a separate field / table just for the privileges; these may sound like trivial to implement, but brings along other problems.\nWhat if they were to change the reputation level at which you gain a privilege; this happens to beta sites and has happened to Stack Overflow as well, who knows one day Super User will be so crowded (or inactive, let's hope not) that we'd have change the reputation levels as well?\nWhere this currently involves a simple comparison (reputation &gt; editPrivilegeLevel) it would otherwise involve some more logic to get it working the way it currently works, even by just adding a separate field you'll need that field to be synchronised with the other field which adds extra logic and has the problem described in the previous paragraph.\nIt's eventually possible to rewrite a big part of the code to implement this, which some minor drawbacks; but it'll probably never happen since the current system works well enough and there are more important bugs to fix and features to implement.\nIt's like we use to say in Belgium...\n\nBezint eer u begint. Chill out before you start.\n\n... or its Antwerp version\n\nDenk aleer gij doet, en doende denkt dan nog. Think before you do; and while you're busy, keep thinking.\n\nThis counts for both parties, the person giving the bounty and the people implementing the system.\nWhy isn't this a problem?\nIf you just ask and answer just a few questions, you'll have that reputation back in no time. We're talking about 5 votes a bounty here, not to forget there are other ways to gain reputation as well (suggesting edits, earning a bounty, ...).\nYou're always either learning or educating, so not being able to gain reputation isn't an excuse.", "The reason I chose to ask this question in this format is to inform the moderators of an ongoing problem\n\nIn the case of a fundamental question, less is more. If someone asks &quot;Why is the text on a webpage so big when on my computer when on another computer the text on the same page is smaller?&quot; I see this a lot where the person answers the question giving a long spill which ends up confusing the inquirer.\n\nThat is not a problem which requires moderator attention. Moderators are not here to edit answers and distill them down to the minimum required information.\nIn any case it is a matter of opinion whether comprehensive answers are asking confusing the person who asked the question. It is up to that person to ask for clarification.\nIf you are confused then you need to wait until you have the comment everywhere privilege and then you can ask for clarification.\nYou can also visit Root Access (the Super User chatroom) and ask for clarification there (talk in chat requires 20 rep).\n\nEvery time I try to answer a question; I see a notification that reads &quot;you need 50 reputation to comment&quot;\nComments are not answers. To write an answer you should scroll down below the question, write an answer and click the Post Your Answer button.\n\nHow do I accumulate reputation?\nPlease read Why do I need 50 reputation to comment? What can I do instead?.\nYou only need 50 rep to comment and that is only 5 upvotes on questions you have answered. So concentrate on writing good answers and you will soon earn the comment everywhere privilege.\nIn any case, you can always comment on your own posts.\n\n\nTo make requests for clarification, or mere responses to other answers, you need to wait until you have the comment privilege.\n\nHow do\nI write a good answer?\nIf you are sure you can provide a real answer, then you are of course\nwelcome to go ahead, but make sure it's a full, valid answer to the\nquestion. If you saw something wrong with an existing answer, do\nmention it and its flaws, but make sure you provide an alternative\nsolution that can stand on its own. Do not just copy and paste your\noriginal comment into the &quot;answer&quot; field. But I can't write a good\nanswer without more information!\nAnswers don't have to be exhaustive or infallible, they just need to\ntry to answer the question. It's perfectly fine to post an answer\nsaying, for example, &quot;I'm not sure what the cause of your problem is,\nbut if it's X, you can solve it by doing Y. If that doesn't help, try\nZ and let me know what it says.&quot; Also, if further information does\nbecome available, you can edit your answer later to make it more\nprecise. This is a good habit to get into even if you can comment!\nOn busier sites, if you cannot even try to answer without asking for\nclarification, then move on to another question. Many new questions\nare asked every minute, and there are many unanswered questions still\nwaiting for your help. You might feel bad about abandoning the\nquestion, but it is the absolute responsibility of the asker to\ninclude all relevant information, presented in a clear manner. Failure\nto do so at any level decreases their chances to find a good answer to\ntheir problem.\nWelcome to the community, and good luck!\n\nSee also How do I write a good answer?.", "Welcome to Super User!\n\nFirst of all, let's distinguish between two things: Upvoting an answer, and Accepting an answer.\n\nSince the question you linked to was not asked by you, you cannot (with any amount of reputation) accept the answer. You can, however, upvote it if you have enough reputation.\n\nUpvoting means clicking the little \"up\" arrow to increase the number of votes for the answer. Accepting the answer means checking the checkmark next to an answer, but only the person who asked the question is allowed to do that (and nobody else can override the decision they make).\n\nThe privileges on Super User at different reputation levels are described here. The privileges are put in place for a number of reasons:\n\n\nTo eliminate cheating, such as someone creating a lot of user accounts and using these new accounts to upvote their own questions/answers.\nTo prevent spammers and people who ask bad questions (which we don't want on the site) from artificially inflating the perceived vote score of questions and answers they post.\nTo encourage users to participate in the site, privileges are unlocked as your reputation increases as a way of \"gamifying\" the participation process. \n\n\nHere are some ridiculously easy ways to get reputation at the low numbers (15 and 50) you're talking about:\n\n\nEach upvote on a question you ask gives you 5 reputation.\nEach upvote on an answer post you provide gives you 10 reputation.\nEach accepted suggested edit gives you 2 reputation.\n\n\nSo, to get to 15 reputation, you'd have to get three question upvotes, two answer upvotes, or 7 accepted suggested edits, or any combination of these things. Many users can get past 15 reputation (regardless of their knowledge level) in about 20 minutes.\n\nTo get to 50 reputation to be able to make comments, you'd have to get 5 answer upvotes, 10 question upvotes, 25 accepted suggested edits, or any combination of these things. Many users can get past 50 reputation (regardless of their knowledge level) in about an hour.\n\nOne thing we want to emphasize is that if your only purpose in participating in our site is:\n\n\nTo make comments like \"Thanks, that helped!\" or \"This worked for me!\";\nTo upvote answers that worked for you\n\n\n... Then you won't earn any reputation from either of these actions, so you'll never get enough reputation to perform either of them. It's kind of a \"chicken and the egg\" problem in that sense: the things you're wanting to do, don't provide reputation when you do them, either.\n\nWhy?\n\nWell, simple. Comments like \"Thanks!\" are actively discouraged, because they just clutter up the site, and are not needed. If an answer is useful to you, that's great! Just leave it at that.\n\nYou don't have to edit a Wikipedia article with a comment saying that \"I learned something today!\" every time you read an interesting Wiki article, do you? \n\nDo you call up the local news station every time they provide an intriguing news story to tell them that it was a good one?\n\nUpvotes and comments are reserved for users who are taking a more active role in the site, primarily by: (1) posting answers to questions; (2) asking good questions; or (3) editing posts that need revision. Once you spend even 1 hour working on any of these three things, you'll easily have enough reputation to upvote and make comments.\n\nThen, once you can upvote, feel free to do so whenever you find a question or answer that you find useful. But please don't add comments indicating that the answer helped you; they just clutter up the site. \n\nComments are for asking for clarification, providing constructive critique, or making the community aware of inaccuracies in an answer. So it would be okay to post a comment if an answer doesn't work for you, if you explain why and what circumstances it doesn't work under.\n\nWith 8 reputation, you're more than half-way towards having 15 reputation, and once you get that far, getting to 50 isn't difficult at all. If you intend to use the site even occasionally, it might be worth putting in the effort to get up to a modest reputation level. But if you don't, it's really no harm done. \n\nAbout 90% of all Super User and Stack Overflow users don't even have an account, so they: \n\n\nCan't post questions, answers, or comments.\nCan't upvote anything.\nHave never participated in Meta (you've already done this!).\n\n\nAnd that's perfectly fine with us. We're happy to collect, prune, and take care of a body of knowledge that the vast majority of the people benefit from, but don't have to contribute to. If you feel you want to contribute, we welcome you; but just keep in mind that by even having an account, you're in the top 10% of our users! \n\nThe low-reputation privilege restrictions are mainly there to make sure you're a human being (and not a bot / computer script), and that the quality of your communication is up to the standards of our site. Please pardon our lack of trust at this early stage; the veil will quickly be lifted once you post a few questions, answers, or edits.", "The site requires you to have at least 75 reputation points to have the privilege to set a bounty on a question. The button probably only appears then.\n\nYou can find the list of privileges here.", "Seems you actually can't close/reopen until 15 reputation.\n\nA long time ago, this didn't matter. But a while ago, we started recording close votes as flags instead of the way we'd stored them previously, which also let us start using the \"recommend closure\" flag for users with flagging privileges but not full close privileges.\n\nSo, this giant check for \"can this user flag\" includes two separate checks: one to see if you can flag, and one to see if you have close vote privileges. Problem is, if the CanFlag check fails, the whole check immediately returns false and never even attempts to look at your close privileges.\n\nSince the CanClose check fails, you aren't shown the close button on the question or in the review queues, because you don't have permission to complete that action. But the review queues themselves don't run through the same check, which oddly shows them to you even though you can't do anything there.\n\nSimple solution is to either rejigger the check to not fail at one step if another would still cause it to succeed, or just reassign close privileges to 15 reputation to match the flag privileges and prevent confusion and just forget about the weird code thing.", "How does a new superuser increase their reputation?\n\nFirst, please take some time to read the articles in our help centre. There you will find:\n\n\n How do I earn reputation?\n \n The primary way to gain reputation is by posting good questions and\n useful answers. Votes on these posts cause you to gain (or sometimes\n lose) reputation. Please note that votes for posts marked “community\n wiki” do not generate any reputation.\n \n You gain reputation when:\n \n \n question is voted up: +10\n answer is voted up: +10\n answer is marked “accepted”: +15 (+2 to acceptor)\n suggested edit is accepted: +2 (up to +1000 total per user)\n bounty awarded to your answer: + full bounty amount\n one of your answers is awarded a bounty automatically: + half of the bounty amount (see more details about how bounties work)\n site association bonus: +100 on each site (awarded a maximum of one time per site)\n \n\n\nSource What is reputation? How do I earn (and lose) it? - Help Center - Super User\n\nNote that the first few posts by a new user go into the First Posts queue:\n\n\n The First Posts queue contains the first few posts made by new users (who will probably need help learning to use the site).\n\n\nUsers with the Access Review Queues privilege will be able to:\n\n\n Edit the post, flag it, vote on it, add a comment, or upvote a previously existing comment. \n\n\nand so provide you with guidance on improving your first few posts.\n\nRelated:\n\n\nFAQ for Stack Exchange sites - Meta Stack Exchange\nPrivileges - Super User\nPrivileges - Remove new user restrictions\nHow do I ask a good question? - Help Center - Super User\nHow do I write a good answer? - Help Center - Super User\nWhy do I need 50 reputation to comment? What can I do instead?.", "If you have a certain reputation on one stackexchange network site you get +100 reputation on every new network you join. The message for the reputation change is \"You've earned a bonus of 100 reputation because we trust you on other sites in the network\". If gives you certain privileges which makes sense if you understood stackexchange.\n\nOnce you cross that level of reputation you get the bonus on every network.", "As per \n\nKill the Retag option, use just Edit &amp; Propose a privilege to sit in the 500 reputation mark\n\nretag is no longer present. \n\n\n As determined from earlier discussions, the retag privilege serves a lot more confusion and a lot less of its benefit due to the suggested edit system. It must be done away with. It will be done away with. ♪\n\n\nSo this is status-bydesign", "Creating tags requires \n\n\n1500 reputation on Stack Overflow (due to the # of users)\n500 reputation on Meta Stack Exchange\n300 reputation on Graduated Sites that have their custom design but that are still young and relatively small\n150 reputation on public betas and graduated sites without a custom design\n\n\nThe question you linked to is years old and things have changed since then.\n\nYou can see the full list of privileges unlocked by reputation levels here.", "Yes\nIt does not matter how much reputation a user has achieved once, it's only important how much he has at the very moment.\nThere might be some delays until the reputation changes have their effects on the granted permissions due to caching and that some server tasks are only scheduled hourly or daily, but in general, the current privileges depend on the current reputation score.", "I'll try and address your issues individually here:\n\n\n As I stated, this new box requires a click to invoke and a click to dismiss, making it more work than the previous one.\n\n\nThis is intentional, the hover behavior was not intuitive. We do however enable hovering once you click to open any of the buttons on the left, since you have declared your intent.\n\n\n This new box is showing me information I can already get from the reputation tab of my user page.\n\n\nThe achievements box is from across the network. It is immediately updated, contains events from all sites, and includes badges - none of these are true of the reputation tab.\n\n\n I don’t see the nice day / week / month / votes / revisions / favorites summary information that was there.\n\n\nTrue, these were used by very few users and were not retained. We can't please everyone with every change we make.\n\n\n I don’t see the activity, privileges, and log out links that were there.\n The chat and meta links seem to be gone, too.\n\n\nChat and logout at in the site switcher on the left. Activity was removed. Privileges is available from the help center on the right.", "We don't take away achievements (unless they were awarded following fraudulent behavior).\n\nYou achieved the privilege - right? That you lost rep and therefor also lost the privilege doesn't mean you never achieved it.\n\nYou will not be notified again of regaining the privilege once your reputation goes back up.", "If you see a need for a new tag, consult Help Center > Privileges > create tags. There is advice there on evaluating if the proposed tag is appropriate to add. Create the tag by adding it to a question. To do this, you need to have the Create Tags privilege, which is awarded at 300 reputation on Server Fault. If you do not have this much reputation, post a question on Meta Server Fault asking someone else to create it.\n\nSome questions about how to use Server Fault are asked and answered on Meta Server Fault. But there is more information in the Help Center. Searches in Meta Server Fault don't return results in the Help Center. You can find the Help Center via the link [Help] in the lower-left of Server Fault pages.", "The reputation requirement was raised to combat some of the bad reviews happening with unexperienced users taking part in the queues.\n\nIf you want the full background info, see this Meta Stack Overflow discussion: Propose a privilege to sit in the 500 reputation mark.", "The minimum required reputation to offer a bounty is 75. See the Set Bounties privilege.", "That /users route works perfectly fine for showing the top users (of all time).\n\nFor example to get the top 20 Mathematics users, use:\n\n&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; /2.2/users?pagesize=20&amp;order=desc&amp;sort=reputation&amp;site=math\n\nWhich gives the same results as the top users page on math.stackexchange.com.\n\nEG:\n\n{\n \"items\": [ {\n \"reputation\": 431528,\n \"user_id\": 12042,\n \"display_name\": \"Brian M. Scott\"\n }, {\n \"reputation\": 429508,\n \"user_id\": 6312,\n \"display_name\": \"Andr&amp;#233; Nicolas\"\n },{ \n \"reputation\": 260417,\n \"user_id\": 8508,\n \"display_name\": \"Robert Israel\"\n }, {\n \"reputation\": 259414,\n \"user_id\": 622,\n \"display_name\": \"Asaf Karagila\"\n },\n ... etc.", "Try answering few questions. Will get reputation and then the privilege to comment on posts.\n\nAs seen on https://stackoverflow.com/privileges/comment you can comment when you reach 50 points of reputation. It means 5 upvotes on answers, which for sure you can do with some effort.\n\nAlso try to make your questions more clear and concise. It will be a good way to have more people trying to answer your questions. I am sure there is more than one person who can help you with that specific problem.", "Badges and new privileges are part of the /notifications method, which is a single call for all accounts across the network. The results show whether the notification is unread or not. There's also a separate method just for unread notifications: /notifications/unread.\nFor reputation changes, all I know are some site-specific methods (/me/reputation, /me/reputation-history and /me/reputation-history/full). They don't have a read/unread indication. There must be one which does, and provides a network-wide view, since the Stack Exchange mobile apps use them. This question is asking the same: Get reputation changes across all sites without querying each one individually and I found the answer: it's an undocumented API v2.3 method, /me/achievements.", "The basic guidelines for editing are outlined in the \"Edit questions and answers\" privilege page, and minor edits are discouraged: \n\n\n Try to make the post substantively better when you edit, not just change a single character. Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged.\n\n\nAlthough you need 2000 reputation to earn the \"Edit questions and answers\" privilege, it's guidelines apply for suggested edits as well.", "You are\n\n\n Stack Exchange Reputation.\n\n\n1) From my birth I want to rise\n\nBut I shall fall, its no surprise\n\n\n Everybody wants their reputation score to improve, but downvotes, vote reversals, and other rep-decreasing events are inevitable.\n\n\nI should display approval from afar\n\nBut pedantic snobs is what you are.\n\n\n Rep only goes up if someone else expresses approval of your actions (upvoting a post, approving a suggested edit, etc.), but they won't do that if they're too nitpicky.\n\n\n2) I could produce a rise in rank\n\nBut not if my cachet has sank\n\n\n Higher reputations gives more site privileges\n\n\nUplift me please, by 288*\n\nAnd my master will reach another state\n\n\n The OP needs approximately 288 rep points (284, when I posted this answer) to break the 2k barrier and achieve new privileges.\n\n\nWhat am I?\n\n*time sensitive", "Since votes on comments don’t generate any reputation they don’t result in the notification of a change in reputation to the author. \n\nVotes on answers (and questions) by any user allowed to vote will result in a change in reputation and notification thereof that links to the question/answer that was voted on. \n\nOnly by referring to @alias in a comment will a notification by sent to user alias \n\nhttps://serverfault.com/help/privileges/comment", "This is further compounded by the fact that people coming in with only an association bonus can vote up but can't vote down. I've seen this skew meta posts in weird ways. It seems to me that one of the following is true:\n\nPeople with some experience on the network are qualified to weigh in on per-site metas on sites they don't otherwise participate on. Many meta posts are about features common across the network, after all. People in this category should be able to vote up or down.\n\nPeople without some local experience are not qualified to influence a site's policies, scope, etc. Each site should be allowed to determine these matters on its own, and people with an association bonus should not have a vote.\n\n\nObservations:\n\n&quot;Post on meta&quot; is a specific, low-rep privilege (5 rep to earn).\nThe upvote privilege comes at 15 rep, downvote at 125. These numbers work on main -- or, if they don't, disrupting them would be a much bigger conversation.\nThere exists one special category right now where the association bonus is excluded: you need 10 local reputation to answer a protected question. Thus, the concept of local reputation already has meaning.\n\nProposal\nI present two options, depending on which of #1 and #2 above you think correct. (I actually don't have a strong opinion on which that is; I just want meta voting to be balanced.)\nOption 1: add a new privilege, &quot;vote on meta&quot;, that comes at some low level (perhaps 15 to go with &quot;vote up&quot;, or 5 to go with &quot;participate on meta&quot;). This privilege grants votes in both directions.\nOption 2: redefine the two &quot;vote&quot; privileges to add &quot;on main&quot;, and add another privilege, &quot;vote on meta&quot;, that comes at some low level of local reputation. I propose 10 for consistency with protection. Yes this will require some explanation, as it'll be the only privilege in the list that relies on local reputation. If we do this we should add an entry for &quot;answer protected questions&quot; too, for consistency.\nTL;DR\nVoting on meta is different and the current system allows weird skew. People should get the privilege to vote in both directions at the same time. The status of the association bonus is an open question." ]

[ "The Cobb AccessPORT is the world's most flexible and easiest to use ECU upgrade solution for your Subaru. The AccessPORT allows you to replace conservative factory settings with more aggressive calibrations to unlock free power hidden within your ECU. This is the last engine management solution you'll ever need." ]

[ "Each Accessport is only compatible with certain vehicles. With many platforms, it can even be specific vehicles through specific model year ranges. Luckily, it's pretty easy to determine which Accessport part number you need.", "This COBB 3\" GESi catted downpipe is a direct factory replacement when used with the COBB Cat-Back Exhaust. ... All of these features combine to provide a free flowing exhaust outlet for high energy exhaust gases to reduce turbo back pressure and increase turbo efficiency.", "The Accessport is the industry leading OEM ECU flashing, managing and monitoring assistant. Unlock power hidden within the ECU by replacing conservative factory settings with more aggressive calibrations. The result is impressive gains in torque and horsepower while maintaining a high degree of safety.", "Acworth is a city in Cobb County Georgia, United States. It is part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.", "The Rockport Group is an American manufacturer of shoes based in Newton, Massachusetts. It is home to the Aravon, Dunham and Rockport brands and the popular Rockport Cobb Hill Collection.", "The Ty Cobb Museum, located in the Hall of Famer's hometown of Royston, GA, is getting a new home.", "Cobb was born August 22, 1990, so had just turned 21. The Packers played the opener that year as Super Bowl champs, meaning Cobb had just missed out on a championship.", "ATL has two terminals – the Domestic Terminal and the Maynard H. Jackson Jr. International Terminal, where passengers can check in and claim bags. The Domestic Terminal has north and south entrances, and the South Domestic Terminal is also called Atlanta Airport Delta Terminal as it exclusively serves Delta passengers.", "Cobb & Co. is a New Zealand family restaurant chain. ... Its name derives from the Cobb & Co stagecoach business originally founded in Australia in the 19th century by Freeman Cobb, although the chain has no direct historical connection with that company.", "The couple confirms that their three-way marriage with Vanessa Cobbs is officially over. In a lengthy post shared by Dimitri Snowden, he revealed that it was Vanessa Cobbs who pulled the plug in their marriage.", "How long depends upon what the case is made from — the more waterproof, the better. “Once money gets wet or moist, it will start to mold within as little as 200 days,” Cobb says.", "Ty Cobb has the highest MLB career batting average (.366).", "McEachern High School is 1 of 17 high schools in the Cobb County.", "There are 685 calories in a 1 zalad serving of Zaxby's Cobb Zalad with Grilled Chicken.", "['Cobb-Douglas Production Function: Cobb-Douglas production function refers to the production function in which one input can be substituted by other but to a limited extent. ... ', 'Leontief Production Function: ... ', 'CES Production Function:']", "Background: Totally implantable access port (TIAP) provides reliable, long term vascular access with minimal risk of infection and al- lows patients normal physical activity. With wide use of ports, new complications have been encountered.", "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. IEEE 802.1X is an IEEE Standard for port-based Network Access Control (PNAC). It is part of the IEEE 802.1 group of networking protocols. It provides an authentication mechanism to devices wishing to attach to a LAN or WLAN.", "With its functional ports, it is not only an access point but can serve as a gigabit switch and a PoE power passthrough. The Mesh line with a multi-hop uplink technology allows for an expanded network wirelessly perfect for large outdoor installations with little infrastructure.", "Cushman is a manufacturer of industrial, personal, and custom vehicles. It is currently based in Augusta, Georgia, United States, and is owned by Textron.", "WAN Miniport is a driver that allows alternative connection methods in Windows XP and later versions, including connecting to the Internet through a point-to-point protocol over Ethernet (PPoE) as well as wireless networking, making WAN connections possible.", "There are 430 calories in a 1 salad serving of Chick-fil-A Cobb Salad.", "AirPort Express is a lightweight router designed for music sharing. AirPort Extreme is a more powerful router with additional ports and features. Time Capsule is essentially an AirPort Extreme with a built-in hard drive for wireless file sharing and Time Machine backup.", "There are 550 calories in a 1 salad serving of Panera Bread Green Goddess Cobb Salad with Chicken.", "Seeking Sister Wife: Split! Vanessa Cobbs Parted Ways With Dimitri And Ashley Snowden. Looks like Dimitri and Ashley Snowden are back to square one in expanding their polygamous family. The couple confirms that their three-way marriage with Vanessa Cobbs is officially over.", "Transmission container (T-CONT) is a service carrier in the upstream direction in the GPON system. All GEM ports are mapped to T-CONTs. In the GPON system, all services such as Ethernet services are encapsulated into GEM frames and then transmitted on the GPON line. ... Port ID: uniquely identifies a GEM port.", "There are 260 calories in 1 serving of Chick-fil-A Grilled Cobb Salad.", "FrSky ACCESS is newly developed RC control and telemetry communications (Advanced Communication Control, Elevated Spread Spectrum) protocol. Frsky recently announced their new protocol they have been working on, called ACCESS. (Advanced Communication Control, Elevated Spread Spectrum).", "The ASA uses a concept of security levels to determine whether traffic can pass between two interfaces. The higher the security level setting on an interface, the more trusted it is.", "The AirPort Time Capsule (originally named Time Capsule) was a wireless router sold by Apple Inc., featuring network-attached storage (NAS) and a residential gateway router, and is one of Apple's AirPort products. They are, essentially, versions of the AirPort Extreme with an internal hard drive.", "Due to the Kincade wild fire in Sonoma County, an evacuation warning is being issued at this time for residents of Cobb Mountain and some surrounding communities. ... An evacuation warning is not a mandatory evacuation. Repeat. This is not an evacuation order, simply a warning.", "Cobb Name Meaning. from the Middle English byname or personal name Cobbe, Cobba, or its Old Norse cognate Kobbi, which are probably from an element meaning 'lump', used to denote a large man. from a reduced form of Jacob.", "But the bottom line is that the reason why an 11 degree curvature is called a scoliosis, but a 9 degree curve is not – or why treatment might be recommended at 20 degrees, but not yet at 12 – is not based around scientific evidence showing that a person's health is harmed by a 15 degree Cobb angle but a 5 degree Cobb ..." ]

[ "US Supreme Court Justice David Souter plans to retire, US media reported on Thursday, a development that would give President Barack Obama his first chance to make an appointment to the nation's highest court." ]

[ "An emotional Supreme Court Justice David Souter bid a fond farewell Tuesday to judges and lawyers he has worked with for nearly two decades.", "Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, the Court's oldest member and leader of its liberal bloc, is retiring.", "TOPEKA, Kan. Chief Justice Robert Davis has retired from the Kansas Supreme Court, citing health concerns.", "Sonia Sotomayor, left, President Obama's choice to replace retiring Justice David Souter, takes the oath from Chief Justice John Roberts to become the Supreme Court's first Hispanic justice and only the third woman in the court's 220-year history, in Washington, Saturday, Aug. 8, 2009.", "Justice Markandey Katju, known for having delivered several path-breaking verdicts, retired as judge of the Supreme Court on Monday.", "The second longest-serving sitting state Supreme Court chief justice in the United States, Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Moyer died at age of 70 on Friday.", "Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, leader of the court's liberal bloc, announced Friday he would retire this summer, and President Barack Obama said he would ``move quickly'' to name a nominee to replace him.", "President Obama says he'll move ``quickly'' to replace retiring US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.", "Justice Falak Sher, a senior deposed judge of the Supreme Court, retired on October 21st without being reinstated despite repeated promises made by the Pakistan People's Party government.", "Sotomayor, a judge on the US Court of Appeals who has been nominated by President Obama to succeed retiring Justice David Souter, fractured her ankle at New York's LaGuardia Airport before taking the shuttle to Washington, where she had a busy schedule of meetings with senators.", "Alabama Chief Supreme Court Justice Sue Bell Cobb is stepping down from her seat, as announced in a written statement by Cobb Wednesday.", "California Chief Justice Ronald George discusses his decision to retire with reporters in his office.", "US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has been hit by credit card fraud, various media report.", "Justice John Paul Stevens says he'll decide soon about retiring - for his own peace of mind and to give President Barack Obama and the Senate plenty of time to replace him.", "US Sen. Jim Bunning said his support for conservative judges may come into play shortly because he believes one of the Supreme Court's liberal members, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, could die in less than a year from pancreatic cancer.", "Massachusetts Chief Justice Margaret Marshall, who wrote the landmark ruling making the state the first to legalize gay marriage, said Wednesday she's retiring to spend time with her husband, who has Parkinson's disease.", "Margaret H. Marshall, who served as Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for more than a decade, is re-joining a Boston law firm.", "The Supreme Court has held that a judge can be compulsorily retired even for a single adverse entry as a judicial officer is expected to maintain high standards of integrity.", "As expected, President Barack Obama has nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, who announced his decision to step down from America's highest court earlier this spring.", "In an historic vote, the Senate has confirmed the first Hispanic US Supreme Court justice.", "Supreme Court judge and outgoing parole board chief Justice Narelle Johnson has suffered a cerebral aneurysm.", "Air Force sidelines 17 ICBM officers Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has been released from a Washington hospital, two days after undergoing surgery for injuries suffered in a bicycle accident.", "While the Supreme Court started its summer recess last week, watchdog group Common Cause is keeping the heat on Justice Clarence Thomas.", "Justice Margaret L. Workman has announced the Supreme Court has hired a monitor to oversee juvenile justice facilities in West Virginia.", "Vice Chancellor Stephen P. Lamb is retiring from the Chancery Court bench, Gov. Jack Markell announced this afternoon.", "Tennessee will swear in its first woman state Supreme Court chief justice today, a judge known as much for her active lifestyle as her court decisions.", "US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been hospitalized for surgery for pancreatic cancer.", "New Jersey voters easily approved a ballot question forcing judges and state Supreme Court justices to pay more for retirement and health benefits.", "Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who underwent treatment for pancreatic cancer, has been released from the hospital and returned home, the Associated Press reports the court as saying.", "Sonia Sotomayor has been sworn in as the first Hispanic US Supreme Court justice, the third woman to serve on the high court, and the 111th justice overall.", "Ohio supreme court chief justice dies", "US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg underwent surgery yesterday in New York for pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of the disease." ]

[ "I think you need to approach this issue on a slightly larger scale. As others have pointed out, changing the bounding box in-game at runtime might be quite tricky from the gameplay perspective. What do you want to happen for example when a player jumps, fits into some small place (where his bounding box wouldn't fit if he wasn't jumping) and then finishes jumping? You probably need some sort of \"crouch\" mode. And if you have that, you can easily apply it to jumping.\n\nIn the collision detection method itself, I guess the solution will depend on whether you want a discrete change or a progressive increase/decrease in size that lasts multiple frames." ]

[ "Following is change in Publishing.css to get icons\n\n#cm_pq_publish.item .image\n{\n\n background-image: url({ThemePath['Base']}/Sprites/base_Sprites.16px.png);\n background-position: 0 -800px;\n height: 16px;\n width: 16px;\n}\n\n#cm_pq_unpublish.item .image\n{\n\n background-image: url({ThemePath['Base']}/Sprites/base_Sprites.16px.png);\n background-position: 0px -816px;\n height: 16px;\n width: 16px;\n}", "To start with, the citation is a bit misleading. The logic didn't handle 128 sprites and 256 tiles at a time, but its ROM could hold as many different ones.\n\nThe arcade board does not feature a free programmable sprite engine. There is a fixed sets (128) of direct addressable graphics in 8 KiB of ROM used (128 x 32 x 16). A set of shift registers, feed by the object ROM provides the object (sprite) data to be superimposed on (non shifted) tiles from another set (256) of ROMs (256 x 8 x 16 = 4 KiB). Either is indexed via a 1 KiB RAM.\n\nThe whole design is quite simple. Since it's a fixed logic with all data embedded, no loading is needed. Further no priority logic for overlapping is present (Overlapping, where neccessary, is handled by software thru page flipping) and no collision detection either (as well done in software).\n\nIt's a complete different technology than what is used in any sprite units like from a VIC or 9918 or alike. All sprite data is 'on board' (as ROM), and likewise the display RAM, thus zero memory bandwidth (*1) is needed to display them.\n\n\n\n*1 - At least not in the sense a CPU RAM based system with shared access would need to be calculated. Of course do all parts of the controller have certain bandwidths and use them.", "Sprite Sheets with a Uniform Grid\n\nThe easiest form of sprite sheets, are sheets that use a uniform grid to lay out the individual sprites of your object. Your sheet is essentially a grid with a certain number of rows and columns of cells. Each cell contains a single sprite. \n\nUsing a uniform grid, means that all cells have the exact same dimensions. Additionally, the alignment of the cells is always the same (this means the horizontal and vertical separation between cells is constant).\n\nThe image below shows a sheet with a uniform grid (property of pixel artist SmithyGCN)\n\n\n\n\n\nRequired Metadata to Extract Sprites\n\nAs you correctly say, you need some metadata that describes the structure of the sprite sheet, in order to extract individual sprites from the sheet. I tend to use the following list of metadata myself (you can use this as an example, and add or remove metadata attributes as needed):\n\nunsigned int m_SpriteWidth; // Width of an individual sprite\nunsigned int m_SpriteHeight; // Height of an individual sprite\nint m_SpriteOriginX; // Horizontal origin of the sprite\nint m_SpriteOriginY; // Vertical origin of the sprite\nunsigned int m_SheetWidth; // Width of the sprite sheet image\nunsigned int m_SheetHeight; // Height of the sprite sheet image\nunsigned int m_SheetColumns; // Number of columns in the sheet\nunsigned int m_SheetRows; // Number of rows in the sheet\nint m_SheetSeparationX; // Horizontal separation of cells\nint m_SheetSeparationY; // Vertical separation of the cells\nint m_SheetLeft; // Left position of the first cell\nint m_SheetTop; // Top position of the first cell\n\n\nThese parameters will let you use a wide variety of sheets. Here's an explanation and motivation for the chosen parameters:\n\n\nThe sprite width and sprite height describe how big an individual sprite is. You need this information to generate a quad of the appropriate size to draw on. Additionally, you need this value to calculate the UVs of the rectangular area you want to cut out of your sheet. \nThe sprite origin X and sprite origin Y describe where a sprite is drawn when you specify a drawing location. For example, if you set the origin to be at the horizontal center, and vertical bottom of the sprite (14,27), the sprite will be drawn above and centered on the location of the object. This is typically what you want, as a ground-enemy should be drawn \"just above\" the ground and centered on it's position. Additionally, the origin is used as the center for scaling and rotating.\nThe sheet width and sheet height describe the width and height (in pixels) of the complete sprite sheet. This information is needed when calculating the UVs of the rectangular area you want to cut out of the sheet. After all, you need to normalize your UVs to a value between 0.0f and 1.0f, so you'll need to convert your pixel coordinates to relative coordinates through a division by the width and height of the sheet respectively.\nThe sheet columns and sheet rows values describe how many rows and columns of cells are within your sprite sheet. You need these to convert a sprite index (= which sprite you want to draw) to pixel coordinates. You'll want to number your sprites in scanline order (i.e. left-to-right, then top-to-bottom). You can then find the column of the sprite as (index % m_SheetColumns) and the row of the sprite as (index / m_SheetColumns). This last calculation works because of the floor-rounding due to integer division. The number of rows can be used to prevent the index from overlowing outside of the sprite sheet range by doing index = (index % (m_SheetColumns * m_SheetRows)) before using it to calculate the column and row.\nThe sheet separation X and sheet separation Y values describe the spacing in between cells. In the case of the above sheet, both these values would be 2 (as there is a two pixel white border between cells, that makes up the grid of the sheet). If you tightly pack your individual sprites, this value would be zero. Having a small separation can be useful to make your sheets more clearer to the human eye.\nThe sheet left and sheet top values indicate the starting position of the sheet. In the case of the above sheet, a 1 pixel white border was added around the entire sheet. This means that all pixel coordinates need to be shifted one pixel downward and one pixel to the right when calculating the rectangular cutout region. If your top-left cell starts at the very top-left of the sheet image fire (at coordinate (0,0)), this value would be (0,0).\n\n\n\n\nIn summary, you can back multiple sprite into one sprite sheet easily by aligning them on a uniform grid. As you said, you will need to metadata that describes the layout of the sheet. The above list contains some suggested attributes that will give you a lot of flexibility in the type of sheets you can employ in your game. Obviously, you can leave out or add new parameters as needed in your use-case.", "Estava a estudar até agora, e encontrei a maneira de escrever e resolver o problema que considero mais agradavel para mim:\n\nconst Sprite = (x=0, y=0) =&gt; ({\n x: x,\n y: y\n});\n\nconst Shape2D = (x=0, y=0, width=0, height=0) =&gt; ({\n x: x,\n y: y,\n width: width,\n height: height\n});\n\nconst spritePlayer = Sprite(0, 0);\nconst shape2DPlayer = Shape2D(0, 0, 32, 32);\n\nlet Player = Object.assign({}, spritePlayer, shape2DPlayer);", "To keep it simple, you can upload the .svg files on wordpress and include them in your html code just like other image formats such as:\n\n&lt;img src=\"img/demo.svg\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\"&gt;\n\n\nOR\n\n&lt;img src=\"img/demo.svg\" style=\"width: 200px; height: 200px;\"&gt;\n\n\nOR\n\n&lt;img src=\"img/demo.svg\" class=\"demo\"&gt;\n\n.demo{\nwidth:200px;\nheight: 200px;\n}\n\n\na little help from here: https://css-tricks.com/using-svg/\n\nAlso, you can use the svg files as a svg sprite: https://css-tricks.com/svg-sprites-use-better-icon-fonts/", "sender should be transmitting for at least the 2*PT,where PT is end to end propagation delay.\n\nWorst case is between senders that are located at opposite ends of a collision domain.\nImagine sender 1 transmitting at one end. Its signal propagates to the far end where sender 2 has just started transmitting as well. Sender 2 detects the collision, aborts its transmission and generates a jam signal.\nNow, the jam signal needs to propagate all the way back to sender 1 who needs to still be sending in order to successfully detect the collision. If it had already finished sending the frame it would regard the transmission as successful - the collided frame wouldn't get resent, it'd be just lost.\nSo, the minimum frame size is required to exceed twice the maximum propagation time multiplied by the link speed.", "Hardened SHA-1 detects collisions built of a certain form, If someone were to find a collision using brute-force birthday attack (currently not feasible) the detection would not work. \n\nThe vectors are specific small differences which may help to convert a near collision into a full collision. \n\nThe details are in the paper: https://marc-stevens.nl/research/papers/C13-S.pdf \n\nThis will detect an attack which has a similar construction to the attack performed. Future cryptanalysis may however lead to other forms of attack. It is worth mentioning any hash function that is may be vulnerable to new kinds of attacks though. SHA-3 may also be vulnerable to attacks that are yet unknown.\n\nHardened SHA-1 tries to be identical to SHA-1 almost all the time with a probability of differing in honest usage of less than $2^{-90}$. Yet it should be resilient to attacks by detecting them and changing the output to something that differs.\n\nSHA-1 has been collision free until very recently. Hardened SHA-1 should be secure in this regard; much more secure then SHA-1. It is obviously better than thoroughly broken options such as MD5. \n\n\n\nHardened SHA-1 tries to be backwards compatible with SHA-1. If you don't need this backward compatibility don't use it, use SHA-3 or SHA-2, even if you have to truncate to 160 bits.", "There are no \"auto-fit\" features in Illustrator.\n\nThere have been a few users who have written scripts to fill something with a shape. In all these scripts a circle is the only shape which will work. There are issues with varying width and heights and collision detection. It's just not something Illustrator was designed to do, or does well.\n\nI'm afraid, the best option is to manually fit your shapes into the container you want.\n\nThis question may be worth a look as well: How to make a logo where a letter is made of particles of varying sizes?", "Summarizing the points above, what matters for two pieces of pixel art to match is that their pixel density (texels per screen area / world unit) is the same.\n\nUsing some sprites from Stardew Valley as an example, we can see that even though the sprites have different texture dimensions, they match up on a consistent grid because each pixel is drawn the same size.\n\n\n\nIf we think of the size of the plant as one tile / one unit of world space, we can see this unit spans 16 pixels horizontally and vertically. The character, having twice the height of the plant, also covers twice the number of tiles / world units, so the density of pixels stays the same at 16 pixels per world unit.\n\nFor Unity specifically, it exposes this for you as a Pixels Per Unit setting in the Sprite import settings inspector. As long as you use one consistent number here for all of your sprites, Unity will automatically handle drawing them at the right size in your world to keep this pixel density — even if they're odd sizes and not power-of-two or exact multiples of your tile size. So in this example, both the shrub and the character, and everything else in the game would use a PPU OF 16.\n\nThe exact number you choose isn't a big deal, it's consistency that matters most. If we wanted each tile to span 2 world units, so that when level editing we can easily snap to tile corners (odd numbers) and tile centers (even numbers), then we'd use a PPU of 8 instead for all our sprites.\n\nJust don't turn it down too low. You'll see some articles out there recommending a PPU setting of 1, meaning a 256-pixel sprite will span 256 world units. While this might not sound alarming, systems like physics are tuned assuming most of your gameplay will be happening on scales of tenths to tens of units, and making your scale too large can cause them to behave poorly. Try to choose a number of pixels that's meaningful in your gameplay, like the width of your character or your tile. This will also make your math easier for programming &amp; level design (eg. \"I want this character to dash 3 tiles right, so that's x + 3.0f\")\n\nNote that scaling a sprite, UI image, or its parents using transform properties will distort them away from this consistent pixel density, so be very careful with scale properties, and keep most or all of your scene at a scale of 1.0 for simplicity.\n\nOne last caution is that none of this determines how big your sprites actually end up on your screen - that's determined by the size of your game window / screen, and the size/FoV/angle of your camera. For pixel perfect 2D, you'll also need to ensure that the height of your window is a whole-number multiple of the number of sprite pixels your camera sees (orthographic height of camera x 2 x PPU)", "I wouldn't recommend the static body solution, what I've done is something very similar to this answer, but when you apply horizontal forces reduce the ground friction.\n\nNow you have to think carefully what are the types of objects you will have in your world, because you said:\n\n\n I want to keep the object stationary when it is hit by another body\n\n\nWell the terrain is a body, and you want that your character interact with the floor, if you want your character not be affected by dynamic objects, you can set its weight with a very high number, which isn't the same that set it static, because the kinematics will still apply, but other objects will bounce on its surface.\n\nAnother more advanced solution, without change the weight, is that you can detect the character collisions and change its output, so you character won't react to collisions with other objects.\n\nIn any case, if you want to check if the character is in contact with the floor, you need to detect the character collision.", "This is a very broad question, but generally particle system features can be broken down into a few categories. Here are some general ideas for the sorts of things you might want to have.\n\nEmission features define how, when, and where particles are emitted.\n\n\nContinuously generate particles at a fixed rate, or generate a cluster all at once when triggered by some in-game event.\nPlace newly-emitted particles at a point, or randomly within a region, such as a box or circle. The point or region could be moving, e.g. attached to an object or character.\nEmit particles at a rate proportional to the velocity of a moving object, which can be useful for smoke trails and suchlike.\nGive the particles a random initial speed and direction, within certain ranges. For example, an explosion would send particles in all directions while a cannon would send them in the direction the cannon is pointing.\nOptionally have particles inherit velocity from their emitter, when the emitter is itself moving.\n\n\nMotion features control how particles move after they're emitted.\n\n\nGravity or buoyancy makes particles sink or rise.\nCollision detection can be used to make particles respect walls, either by flowing along them or bouncing off.\nAir drag causes fast-moving particles to slow down.\nParticles also might move along a spline defined by the designer, or be attracted to a particular point or region (possibly attached to an object or character), etc.\n\n\nRendering features control how particles look.\n\n\nYou almost certainly want to have the particles change size, color, and alpha as they age. Animation curves can be defined to control these.\nFor a 2D game, the Z-order of particles relative to other game objects should also be controllable.\nFor sprite particles, you might like to have the sprite rotate. It could spin at a random speed, or rotate to face its direction of motion, or the direction its emitter was moving when it was emitted.\nAlso for sprite particles, you might want to have it run through a sequence of animation frames.\n\n\nThese are just a bunch of general ideas. For your specific game you might only need a couple of these, or you might need other ideas that aren't on this list.", "No, you can't. In CNN, if you want to detect landmark, you need to prepare data with region box, it's coordinates, width, height, than number of points that should be detected and points coordinates. Then your target vector should be,\n\nThis is your target vector. Optionally you can use YOLO algorithm.", "As for complex objects I think the best way is just to reduce them to surrounding rectangles, and check if that rectangle is inside the viewport. Even if you will render a texture which is not actually visible (because of it's shape) it's still will be probably faster than doing a more complex detection algorithm.\n\nAs for handling large maps efficiently you should subdivide your map on larger scale, say 10x10. Then you check your viewport intersection. In worst case it hits 4 this 'regions' which will result in (100x100)*4 = 40K objects. This is a simplified example. For a real usage you should consider Quadtree structure which is especially efficient for such subdivisions and collision detection (viewport visibility check is basically collision check between viewport and sprite).", "I found an answer. I basically take everything I need into the colorkey function as follows.\n\nplot3 &lt;- spplot(mymap, \"percentage\", col.regions = plotclr,\n at = round(class$brks, digits=1),\ncolorkey = list(labels = list( labels = c(\"0%\", \"1%\",\"2%\",\"3%\",\"4%\",\"5%\",\"6%\",\"7%\"), \n width = 2, cex = 2)))\n\n\nWidth changes the width of the ribbon legend. It is also possible to change it's height with height = some fraction of 1 = full height.\n\nLooks like it was straight forward after all.\n\nI found it, after much searching, under help(levelplot) in R.", "My advice would be to implement a custom file validator.\n\nTo see how these are used when saving files, you can check out file_save_upload. For an example implementation that is very close to what you want to achieve, check out file_validate_image_resolution.\n\nMy super quick attempt at this\n\n/**\n * Validates an image upload as having a particular aspect ratio\n *\n * @param $file\n * - the uploaded file\n * @param $aspect_ratio\n * - the apect ratio in the format [WIDTH]:[HEIGHT]. E.g. '3:2'\n */\nfunction file_validate_image_aspect(stdClass $file, $aspect_ratio = 0) {\n $errors = array();\n\n // Check first that the file is an image.\n if ($info = image_get_info($file-&gt;uri)) {\n if ($aspect_ratio) {\n // Check that it is smaller than the given dimensions.\n list($width, $height) = explode(':', $aspect_ratio);\n if ($width * $info['height'] != $height * $info['width']) {\n $errors[] = t('The image is the wrong aspect ratio; the aspect ratio needed is %ratio.', array('%ratio' =&gt; $aspect_ratio));\n }\n }\n }\n\n return $errors;\n}", "\"Cropping an image\" means some part of the image is removed in order for the image to fit a certain size. For example, removing the rightmost part of a rectangular image can result in a square.\n\"Resizing an image\" usually means to stretch and squeeze it as needed so it fits a given size. Width and height are modified independently. If the ratio between them is not the same in the original size and in the final size, the image will appear distorted.\n\"Scaling an image\" usually means resizing, but by the same amount horizontally and vertically. The ratio between the width and height is not modified, therefore the final image is not distorted.\nThe \"aspect ratio\" is the ratio between the width and the height. Changing the aspect ratio will perceptually stretch the image either horizontally or vertically.\n\n\nResizing might change the aspect ratio, and from the wording of your question I have assumed scaling meant not changing the aspect ratio.", "One is internal, one is external.\n\nSelf-interference refers to instances where something like a robot arm (with many degrees of freedom) may attempt to move in a path that crosses part of its own body. Your CollisionDetector is likely keeping track of the joint angles in a planned arm movement and seeing if any of them result in such a condition. The robot doesn't need any information about its environment to do this, just a reliable measurement of its own position (and possibly the shape of whatever it may be gripping). \n\n\"Collision Avoidance\" usually refers to the detection of transient objects with externally-facing sensors. For example, a robot has planned a path based on a map of a room but other robots (or people) might be moving around in that same space; the robot detects them with some sort of sensor, and adjusts its planned path (or just stops) until the risk of collision has gone away. This is usually more difficult than detecting self-interference, because modeling the external environment is a bit more complicated than modeling a robot's internal state.", "I would take a learning from templates on videohive. Pre-comp all the text layers and put them in a separate organized folder in the project. This way if they have to edit the after effects file its just a matter of changing the text in the precomped layers. With that being said, I guarantee that you will never have on a week to week basis the same size text layer as there are always more or less characters per word .etc. So you might have to implement some expressions to make boxes increase in height with regards to the text layer.\n\nIf you put your text layers in a bounding box this fixes the horizontal width issue, but the height length will have to be figured out.\n\nThat being said, once its setup, I know that AE CC 2015 when imported into PP CC 2015 allows for users to edit the text from AE inside of PP which is quite useful in your situation where the users may not have that much AE knowledge.", "You can do what you want by using some simple Javascript:\n\nwindow.open(location.href, \"detab\", \"toolbar=0\", \"width=500, height=500\");\n\nI got the Javascript from here.\n\nYou can make a bookmark with this code:\n\nTo do this, press Ctrl (or Cmd on OSX) + D. On the resulting popup, press Edit. Change the URL to:\n\njavascript:window.open(location.href, \"detab\", \"toolbar=0\", \"width=500, height=500\");\n\nMake the name something like open as popup. Note: Copy and Paste the above code - you need to have the javascript: prefix for this to work in Chrome. You can edit the numbers for width and height to what you want them to be. This will make the popup open in that size.", "If the user will be imputting the body height/largest width measures, and you want to have a couple of groups where you final results will be stored at, you should look at the classification algorithms(Logistic Regression, KNN, Random Forests).\nIf on the other hand, you want your program to detect the user from an image and take the measurements itself, you would need to look into Convolutional Neural Networks, along with person detection/segmentation", "This article gives some useful explainations, even if that's before 4.3 came out:\n\n\n If you’re going for the “pixel art” look then the camera’s\n orthographic size is of critical importance; this is the trickiest\n part of nailing 2D in Unity.\n \n The orthographic size expresses how many world units are contained in\n the top half of the camera projection. For example, if you set an\n orthographic size of 5, then the vertical extents of the viewport will\n contain exactly 10 units of world space. (The horizontal extents are\n dependent on the display aspect ratio.)\n \n Recall that your sprite quad is 1 unit to a side. That means the\n orthographic size tells you how many sprites you can stack vertically\n in the viewport (divided by 2).\n \n To render the pixel-art look cleanly, you need to ensure that each\n pixel of the sprite’s source texture maps 1:1 to the viewport display.\n You don’t want source pixels being skipped or doubled-up, or your\n sprites will look distorted and “dirty”. The trick to ensuring this\n 1:1 ratio is to set an orthographic size that matches your vertical\n screen resolution divided by the pixel height of a sprite.\n \n Let’s say you’re running at 960x640, and you’re using 64x64 sprites.\n Dividing the vertical screen resolution (640) by the pixel height of a\n sprite (64) yields 10, the number of 64x64 sprites that can be\n vertically stacked in 640 pixels. Remember that the orthographic size\n is a half-height, so your target orthographic size in this case is\n going to be 5 (one-half of 10). It should look like this:\n \n If you set your orthographic size to half or double that target you\n may still get usable results, because the sprite’s vertical size will\n still divide evenly into the viewport’s vertical size. But if you set\n the orthographic size incorrectly, you will see some pixels skipped or\n doubled, and it will look very bad indeed:\n \n Variable Resolution\n \n You don’t need to be confined to a single, fixed resolution in order\n to render clean pixel art. The simplest way to handle variable\n resolutions is to attach a custom script to your camera which sets the\n orthographic size according to the current vertical resolution and a\n known (fixed) sprite size:\n\n\n// set the camera to the correct orthographic size\n// (so scene pixels are 1:1)\ns_baseOrthographicSize = Screen.height / 64.0f / 2.0f;\nCamera.main.orthographicSize = s_baseOrthographicSize;\n\n\n\n While that is a simple fix, it does have a drawback: as the screen resolution\n decreases, you’ll see less and less of the world, and sprites will\n take up more and more of the screen. That’s the consequence of keeping\n a 1:1 ratio between source and screen pixels: a 64x64 sprite takes up\n more apparent space at 640x480 than it does at 1920x1200. Whether this\n is a problem or not depends on the needs of your specific game.\n \n If you want your sprites to remain the same apparent size regardless\n of screen resolution, then simply set the orthographic size to a fixed\n value and leave it there regardless of the screen resolution. The\n drawback there is that your sprites will no longer have a 1:1\n source-to-screen pixel ratio. You can mitigate the ill effects of that\n by only allowing resolutions which are exactly half or exactly double\n your target resolution.\n\n\n(some emphasis added)\n\nThis obviously works better if the height resolution is divisible by the sprite size, but even when it isn't, it still gives a good approximation of a decent result.\n\n\n\nTL;DR: cameraSelf.orthographicSize = screenH / (float)spriteSize / 2f;", "It's usually not as centralised as you describe.\n\nIf a system supports a background and, say, four sprites then there'll be one part of the video chip that generates the background. That's always running. Then there'll be four distinct shift registers, each responsible for a single sprite. They're also always running.\n\nThe five outputs go simultaneously to a single location. That location decides which one to forward to the video encoder, and often also updates a bit of exposed state about whether more than one of its inputs was active at the same time, which the processor can use to test for collisions.\n\nA sprite that is in practice entirely invisible will nevertheless be loaded into its shift register and shifted out in its entirety.\n\nSo the process is parallel, not serial.\n\nThen sprites-per-line limits from there being space for only so many shifters; there's a split between machines where you directly load hardware registers to describe sprites (like the C64), and those which fetch sprite details from RAM somewhere (like the TMS machines and direct descendants). The difference tends to manifest as whether the programmer can statically specify more sprites than can simultaneously share a line; the cost is that a bit more memory bandwidth is required for the same quality of display. The earliest successful console, the 2600, not only sits in the load-the-registers camp, but includes its background in the list of things that must be loaded and has enough internal storage for a single unique line only.\n\nLater machines also abolish the fixed priorities between elements, allowing it to be specified.", "The most surefire way to do this is to test each frame if the sprite has exceeded the desired boundaries (either physical screen or camera viewport), and if so to clamp them back to the exact boundary. This will prevent any weird bouncing effects from trying to correct the position using an offset, and enable the sprite to collide snugly with the boundaries.\n\nI also come from an XNA background so I made changes along with the code to hopefully make the structure more familiar to you. Anyway, modifying your existing code:\n\nprivate static final float SPEED = 10f; // 10 pixels per second\nprivate static final float SPEED_SLOW = 1f; // 1 pixel per second\n\nprivate Texture texture;\nprivate SpriteBatch batch;\nprivate Sprite sprite;\n\n@Override\npublic void create () {\n float w = Gdx.graphics.getWidth();\n float h = Gdx.graphics.getHeight();\n batch = new SpriteBatch();\n\n texture = new Texture(Gdx.files.internal(\"player.png\"));\n sprite = new Sprite(texture);\n //sprite.setPosition(w/2 -sprite.getWidth()/2, h/2 - sprite.getHeight()/2);\n\n // Set the origin of the sprite (where its position is relative to) to the center of the sprite.\n // The default origin is the bottom-left corner which is why you were making the adjustment above \n // to make it appear centered. This also allows the sprite to rotate around its center, scale around\n // its center, etc.\n sprite.setOriginCenter();\n sprite.setPosition(w * .5f, h * .5f);\n}\n\n@Override\npublic void render () {\n final float dt = Gdx.graphics.getDeltaTime();\n\n update(dt);\n draw();\n}\n\nprivate void update(final float dt)\n{\n // Get input for this frame\n final boolean left = Gdx.input.isKeyPressed(Input.Keys.LEFT);\n final boolean right = Gdx.input.isKeyPressed(Input.Keys.RIGHT);\n final boolean up = Gdx.input.isKeyPressed(Input.Keys.UP);\n final boolean down = Gdx.input.isKeyPressed(Input.Keys.DOWN);\n final boolean slow = Gdx.input.isKeyPressed(Input.Keys.CONTROL_LEFT);\n\n // Calculate directional speed\n float speedX = slow ? SPEED_SLOW : SPEED;\n speedX *= (left ? -1f : right ? 1f : 0f);\n // Scale by our delta time for smooth movement. Optional\n speedX *= dt;\n\n float speedY = slow ? SPEED_SLOW : SPEED;\n speedY *= (down ? -1f : up ? 1f : 0f);\n // Scale by our delta time for smooth movement. Optional\n speedY *= dt;\n\n // Move sprite to new position\n sprite.translate(speedX, speedY);\n\n // Get the bounding rectangle that describes the boundary of our sprite based on position, size, and scale.\n final Rectangle bounds = sprite.getBoundingRectangle();\n\n // Get the bounding rectangle that our screen. If using a camera you would create this based on the camera's\n // position and viewport width/height instead.\n final Rectangle screenBounds = new Rectangle(0, 0, Gdx.graphics.getWidth(), Gdx.graphics.getHeight());\n\n // Sprite\n float left = bounds.getX();\n float bottom = bounds.getY();\n float top = bottom + bounds.getHeight();\n float right = left + bounds.getWidth();\n\n // Used for adjustments below since our origin is now the center.\n final float halfWidth = bounds.getWidth() * .5f; \n final float halfHeight = bounds.getHeight() * .5f;\n\n // Screen\n float screenLeft = screenBounds.getX();\n float screenBottom = screenBounds.getY();\n float screenTop = screenBottom + screenBounds.getHeight();\n float screenRight = screenLeft + screenBounds.getWidth();\n\n // Current position\n float newX = sprite.getX();\n float newY = sprite.getY();\n\n // Correct horizontal axis\n if(left &lt; screenLeft)\n {\n // Clamp to left\n newX = screenLeft + halfWidth;\n }\n else if(right &gt; screenRight)\n {\n // Clamp to right\n newX = screenRight - halfWidth;\n }\n\n // Correct vertical axis\n if(bottom &lt; screenBottom)\n {\n // Clamp to bottom\n newY = screenBottom + halfHeight;\n }\n else if(top &gt; screenTop)\n {\n // Clamp to top\n newY = screenTop - halfHeight;\n }\n\n // Set sprite position.\n sprite.setPosition(newX, newY);\n}\n\nprivate void draw()\n{\n Gdx.gl.glClearColor(1, 1, 1, 1);\n Gdx.gl.glClear(GL20.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); \n\n batch.begin();\n sprite.draw(batch);\n batch.end();\n}\n\n\nNote this is written off the cuff and untested. Take with a grain of salt and an eye for mistakes. :)", "Try function fit-window-to-buffer? Put it on an appropriate hook for use with gdb.\n\n\n fit-window-to-buffer is an interactive compiled Lisp function in\n window.el.\n \n (fit-window-to-buffer &amp;optional WINDOW MAX-HEIGHT MIN-HEIGHT MAX-WIDTH\n MIN-WIDTH)\n \n Adjust size of WINDOW to display its buffer's contents exactly.\n WINDOW must be a live window and defaults to the selected one.\n \n If WINDOW is part of a vertical combination, adjust WINDOW's\n height. The new height is calculated from the actual height of\n the accessible portion of its buffer. The optional argument\n MAX-HEIGHT specifies a maximum height and defaults to the height\n of WINDOW's frame. The optional argument MIN-HEIGHT specifies a\n minimum height and defaults to window-min-height. Both\n MAX-HEIGHT and MIN-HEIGHT are specified in lines and include mode\n and header line and a bottom divider, if any.\n \n If WINDOW is part of a horizontal combination and the value of\n the option fit-window-to-buffer-horizontally is non-nil, adjust\n WINDOW's width. The new width of WINDOW is calculated from the\n maximum length of its buffer's lines that follow the current\n start position of WINDOW. The optional argument MAX-WIDTH\n specifies a maximum width and defaults to the width of WINDOW's\n frame. The optional argument MIN-WIDTH specifies a minimum width\n and defaults to window-min-width'. BothMAX-WIDTHandMIN-WIDTH`\n are specified in columns and include fringes, margins, a\n scrollbar and a vertical divider, if any.\n \n Fit pixelwise if the option window-resize-pixelwise is non-nil.\n If WINDOW is its frame's root window and the option\n fit-frame-to-buffer is non-nil, call fit-frame-to-buffer to\n adjust the frame's size.\n \n Note that even if this function makes WINDOW large enough to show\n all parts of its buffer you might not see the first part when\n WINDOW was scrolled. If WINDOW is resized horizontally, you will\n not see the top of its buffer unless WINDOW starts at its minimum\n accessible position.", "Though your question about Draw arguments is understandable, I do think it is by design. Also,\n\n\n the Top/Left coordinates of the rectangle are not the Top/Left\n coordinates of the drawn sprite, but rather the coordinates of the\n Origin.X/Origin.Y texture pixel.\n\n\nThis is an incorrect statement. Your origin has become the top-left visible pixel, which is governed by screen space, not by misdesign design of Spritebatch. The actual top-left pixel is simply off-screen.\n\nFor clarity, I put all your draws together into one screenshot, and I added some more with rotation. The black lines are gridlines at the destinationRectangle X and Y coordinates.\n\nspriteBatch.Draw(texture, new Rectangle(100, 50, 100, 100), null, Color.White);\nspriteBatch.Draw(texture, new Rectangle(100, 225, 100, 100), null, Color.White, 0, new Vector2(0, 0), SpriteEffects.None, 0);\nspriteBatch.Draw(texture, new Rectangle(100, 400, 100, 100), null, Color.White, 0, new Vector2(128, 128), SpriteEffects.None, 0);\n\nspriteBatch.Draw(texture, new Rectangle(400, 50, 100, 100), null, Color.White, MathHelper.PiOver4, Vector2.Zero, SpriteEffects.None, 0);\nspriteBatch.Draw(texture, new Rectangle(400, 225, 100, 100), null, Color.White, MathHelper.PiOver4, new Vector2(0, 0), SpriteEffects.None, 0);\nspriteBatch.Draw(texture, new Rectangle(400, 400, 100, 100), null, Color.White, MathHelper.PiOver4, new Vector2(128, 128), SpriteEffects.None, 0);\n\n\n\n\nAs you can see, your texture coordinate has not been changed. The destination rectangle has been moved (prior to rotating).\n\nDoes that make sense?\n\nI think so.\n\nTo answer your question, yes, the origin affects both the rotation center and the draw destination. But that alteration is completely logical. A preemptive summary: a destination rectangle does not make sense for a rotated quad, and SpriteBatch.Draw()'s arguments make as much sense as is possible.\n\nConsider the process of drawing this sprite. Using your rectangle with position and size, Spritebatch generates a quad that it will toss into its \"batch\". That quad needs to be rotated about some point (there is no draw overload that includes rotation but does not include origin) For that idea to make sense, some vertices of the quad need to be rotated from behind or above that origin. But you didn't specify a position, you only specified a destination rectangle. That means that the top-left corner vertex (based on the X and Y of your rectangle) must be moved away from the rotation point, and that move is -1 * origin. This happens internally, without any extra work by you. Yes, it changes the \"idea\" of a destination rectangle. But the height and width don't make any sense after rotation either (they've both changed).\n\nCompare that to the alternative. For every rectangle that you want to draw, in order to determine its position, you have to manually rotate the top-leftmost corner relative to your origin, then transform your rectangle's X and Y, then pass that new rectangle into the actual draw call. You do all all that work simply to make the destinationRectangle's position match the screenspace position. In the meantime, the Rectangle's height and width are still wrong, because the rotation changed them, too. And some of your rectangle is farther left than your position value, so it was all for naught anyway.\n\nHopefully that makes sense. I am sure that most of your question came from the pixels that you thought had vanished (but were really just off-screen). If not, I'll be happy to argue about it more. :)\n\nP.S. I am currently trying to roll some 2D physics, and I determined that SpriteBatch would cause more problems than it would solve exactly because of this kind of internal design decision. So I elected to generate quad vertices manually, to avoid my top-left point being transformed without my permission. But again, my trade-off for doing that is that I have to do much, much more work manually.", "Warning: just in case you plan to use them on your own site, don't. (they're trademarked)\n\nThere are several type of \"icons\", some are stored in CSS sprites (one big image with all of them, CSS is used to position proper icon as background) and some are made \"on the fly\" without actual image resource.\n\n\nEditor icons can be found in this URL:https://cdn.sstatic.net/Img/unified/wmd-buttons.svg:\n\n\nFavicons of all sites:\n\nGeneral icons (e.g. vote arrows, favorite star) are now made \"on the fly\" without actual image resource, e.g. to generate the upvote arrow, you can run this HTML code:\n\n&lt;svg aria-hidden=\"true\" width=\"36\" height=\"36\" viewBox=\"0 0 36 36\"&gt;&lt;path d=\"M2 26h32L18 10z\"&gt;&lt;/path&gt;&lt;/svg&gt;", "The three CPUs were designated as follows:\n\nCPU 1 - Main game logic and control of the other two\nCPU 2 - Graphics and enemy movement\nCPU 3 - Sound\n\nThe three CPUs communicate via shared RAM. CPU 2 and 3 perform start-up checks (such as a ROM checksum) and then go into infinite loops, with all activity happening inside interrupts triggered by CPU 1.\n\nCPU 2 is responsible for moving enemies, moving the player's shots and ship, moving the background and doing collision detection. It's code has been disassembled and you can see that it has a few simple commands that are triggered by interrupt. CPU 3 is basically the same.\n\nNote that CPU 2 can refuse commands in cases where they are impossible to execute, e.g. when it has run out of free sprite slots. The enemies are drawn as part of the background tiles when not in flight, to save sprite slots.", "This depends on whether you're building furniture for a general population or a specific individual. An individual can tune their furniture to their body. If this is the case and the furniture is for a specific person, you can follow advice from Is there a procedure or equation to calculate optimal height of a seat based on a given person? as others have suggested, or you can simply work with the person to find where they're comfortable, by visiting a furniture store or having the person sit in an adjustable chair to find the height they're comfortable at.\nIf you don't know who will be using your furniture, you need to go for the average person to make your table fit the largest portion of the population possible. To that end, there are &quot;approximate&quot; standards, which are suggestions and an inch or two in either direction won't have a significant impact.\nA typical dining room has a table at 30 inches and a floor to seat height of 18 inches for the chairs. A typical desk height is 29 inches, and a typical office chair is adjustable, but extrapolating, an average desk chair height would be 17 inches.\nMore generally (from How to Choose the Right Size Dining Chairs)\nRegarding table and chair height:\n\nAllow 12 inches between the seat of your chair and your tabletop.\n\nThis in particular is the answer to your question. Given a table of x height, the chair seat should be approximately x-12 inches. I would not go with a smaller distance, but one or maybe two inches lower would be OK.\n\nLeave 7 inches between the chair arm and the bottom or apron of the\ntable.\n\nRegarding chair width:\n\nProvide each guest 24-30 inches at the dining table.\nFor rectangular tables, add an extra 12 inches at each end for those seated at the head and foot of the table.", "First off, CSMA/CD is ancient and hopefully not in serious use any more.\n\nThe timing for coax (10BASE5/2) is 16 BT for the potential collision detection delay followed by 32 BT jam time for all PHYs. PHYs with distinct transmit/receive channels (-T, -F) detect collisions earlier than coax.\n\nAfter that, the random pause is started, its size increasing with each unsuccessful transmission attempt. So yes, the channel must be idle after at most 273 BT (the collision started at 225 BT and was sensed at 241 BT). A could potentially transmit right away, after the IFS delay.\n\nThe jam signal could still be on its way to B but it's ahead of A's data and there's no collision.\n\nThe procedure is detailed in IEEE 802.3 Clause 4, especially in 4.1.", "This is probably a matter of calibration. If this is not the raw data (actual voltage curves), look at that.\n\nAs an area below 0 is not possible, it has to be a calibration issue, either in the machine, or in the software. \n\nthe -H plots are about the maximum height of the voltage spike in the side or forward light detector, while the -W plots are about the width (using some definition of flank-detection, so variation prone).\nThe area is also computed in various ways: using something like (H*W)/c (with c something like 2) or with an actual computation of the area of the spike, but again this has all kinds of predefinitions in it (what's the beginning/end of a spike, what's the background-level, ...) Some of these predefinitions you can alter in software, some are hardcoded or even part of the functionality of the hardware, so it might be easy to impossible to get rid of the negative values.\n\nThe FSC-H values corresponding to the FSC-A values are in your plot, and positive, so the most obvious solution (a bad algorithm that calculated Area as Height times Width times Magic and did not account for negative Heights (which depending on spike definition, you might get)) is out.", "If station A needs to transmit, it tries to detect the presence of a carrier signal from another node before attempting it. If there is no carrier then it starts to transmit and this transmission starts to propagate. \n\nIt means that while the first bit reach the farthest point of the media, station A is still transmitting.\n\nLet's suppose that station B needs to transmit, it detects a carrier in the media and then waits for the transmission in progress to end before initiating its own transmission.\n\nThe propagation delay is not the same for each media (air, coaxial cable, UTP, fiber optic, etc.). That's why there is a distance limit for each media. To be sure that whenever a station needs to use the media every other station is aware of the state of it.\n\nExceeding the recommended distance limit will cause late collisions: A type of collision that happens further than is allowed. It will decrease the throughput of the communication link because the data error will go up to the upper layers.", "I would try changing the type of collision detection of the rigidBodies. They might be moving to fast and be &quot;tunneling&quot; through objects.\nunity docs\nYou can read more about different types of collision detection here" ]

[ "Most electric ovens draw between 2,000 and 5,000 watts, with the average electric stove wattage coming in at around 3,000 watts. So how much energy does an electric stove use per hour? Assuming an electricity rate of 12 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), a 3000-watt oven will cost you about 36 cents per hour at high heat." ]

[ "How much electricity does a dishwasher use and how much does it cost? Dishwashers run on electricity, and an average machine uses around 1.5 kWh to clean a typical load of dishes (around 12 place settings).", "How Much Do Electric Gates Cost To Run? Electric gates don't cost much to operate, and their running costs will depend on how much they are used. In standby, an electric gate system will use about 100 watts per day. With electricity costing around 15p per KWh this translates to 1.5p per day.", "How much does it cost to install my range hood? In general, plan on about $200 to $500 depending on the complexity of your installation. This includes the labor cost of installing a new vent hood and does not include parts, adding or modifying ductwork, or electrical work.", "How much does it cost to add washer and dryer hookups? On average, the price to add hookups runs between $350 and $600, but it could cost up to $2,000 if a lot of plumbing and electrical work is needed.", "How much does a fridge cost to run? A typical fridge of about 400-500 litres can use around 495kWh of electricity each year, which equates to a cost of about $163.35, based on an energy usage rate 33c/kWh.", "How much does an electric car cost to buy? Electric cars are usually more expensive to buy than gas-powered equivalents. Prices run around $30,000 to $40,000, but some provinces offer incentives and discounts that can make them more affordable.", "How much electricity does a laptop use per hour in the UK? A laptop typically uses about 50 watts of electricity, the equivalent of 0.05 kWh. This means that if a laptop is on for eight hours a day, it will cost 5p a day to run the laptop (based on an average energy unit cost of 12.5 p/kWh).", "How much does it cost to run an evaporative cooler per month? It costs roughly $20 per month to run a swamp cooler, but this total can vary. This accounts for about $5 in water and $15 in electricity, for a unit running 8 hours and using 80 gallons of water per day.", "How much does an above ground pool cost to run? It costs about $115 per month maintain your above ground pool. You can expect to pay an additional $30 to $250 per month on your electric bill to run the pump, filter and heater.", "How much electricity does a PC use in the UK? A desktop PC typically uses around 100 watts of electricity, the equivalent of 0.1 kWh. This means that if a PC is on for eight hours a day, it will cost 10p a day to run the laptop (based on an average energy unit cost of 12.5 p/kWh).", "['Are utilities such as electricity, heat and water, and appliances such as the fridge, stove and washer/dryer, included in the rent?', 'If not, how much do they cost each month?', 'Is the rental furnished or unfurnished?', 'Can you upgrade the rental, such as painting or decorating?', 'Are pets and smokers permitted?']", "So, how much does a hot tub cost to run? On average a hot tub costs around $1 per day in electricity to run. This figure can vary widely depending on a large number of factors with some owners reporting $10 a month in electricity usage up to $100 per month. Most common usage is in the $20 – $40 per month range.", "How much does a tumble dryer actually cost to run? Typically a Tumble dryer costs 50 cents to dry a 5kg average load of clothes. For the same 50 cent you can.... In order to save money on electricity, it's not necessarily about blanket banning certain appliances, but rather understanding your electricity usage.", "How much electricity does my television use? Most TV's use about 80 to 400 watts, depending on the size and technology. Using a sample cost of 15¢ per kilowatt-hour and five hours of viewing a day, that's $1.83 to $9.13/mo.", "['Is the venue available on my target date? ... ', 'How much does it all cost? ... ', 'Is the location convenient? ... ', \"What's the capacity? ... \", 'What does the space look like? ... ', 'How much work will we have to put into decorating the space?']", "How much does a standard auto electrical service cost? Hiring an auto electrician near you will cost between $80-$120 on Airtasker, depending on the complexity of the problem.", "How much does it cost to run an air conditioner for heating? The average reverse cycle air conditioner costs around $0.13 – $0.36 per hour to run for heating purposes.", "How much does a full charge of the batteries cost? At home, to fill up the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV with electricity, it will take about 70¢.", "Electricity is needed – an automatic gas stove ignition needs electricity to ignite gas in a stove, while a manual gas stove ignition will require a match, a lighter, or a pilot light to start a fire. ... This makes the automatic ignition of gas stoves much safer and more appealing.", "How much does it cost to microchip my cat? Microchips cost £27.50 (including VAT) and fitting can be booked with one our nurses or vets here.", "How much electricity does a TV use? Watching television will generally cost between 16 cents and 30 cents for the standard model. Smaller and more energy-efficient TVs will cost a bit less to run – between 7 cents and 18 cents per hour.", "Your heater will work overtime in northern climates, however. So how much does it cost to run a hot tub? In terms of electricity costs, many modern hot tub manufacturers advertise their products as costing around one dollar per day, with $50 per month at the high end of the average cost range.", "How much does a radiator cost to replace? The actual, final cost depends on the vehicle, the size, and location of the radiator in the vehicle, as well as how much labour is involved to perform the replacement. Radiator replacement costs can run from $400 to over $1000 depending on the make and model.", "Gas stoves offer more precise temperature control than electric ones. The main difference between gas and electric stoves lies in how they respond to temperature setting changes. ... Electric stoves do not respond as quickly, particularly when you're adjusting the temperature down or turning the heat off.", "So $0.72 is the cost of operating the 10 watt charger for 30 days at this rate, or a whopping cost of $8.64 per year. Now you know how much your electric fencing system is costing you to run.", "How much does it cost to charge the Nissan Leaf? The average cost of electricity in the US is $0.1285/kWh, meaning it costs only $5.14 on average to recharge your Nissan Leaf to the full 149-mile range.", "How Much Does Electricity Cost. Nationally, the average cost of electricity in the United States is 10.54 cents per kWh. This means that at an average use of 608 kWh per month, you can expect to pay about $64.00 a month.", "How much does YouTube Premium cost? Considering the vast majority of YouTube content is free, the first thing that likely came into your mind was “OK, so how much does it cost?” The answer to that one is simple: A YouTube Premium subscription runs $12 per month.", "['How much can I afford? ... ', 'Should I make a down payment? ... ', 'Can I sell my car to CarMax? ... ', 'What kind of car do I need? ... ', 'Should I buy a new or used car? ... ', 'How much will my car depreciate? ... ', 'How much does it cost to own a car? ... ', 'Can I get financing?']", "['What happens in the first few steps of the buying process? ... ', 'What guarantees do I have with a new build home? ... ', 'Is there a chain? ... ', 'How much does it cost to run? ... ', 'What are the developments like? ... ', 'Who will be looking after my new build journey?']", "Electrical Wiring Cost The average cost to wire a home is $1,323. While the project can run as little as $125 and as much as $4,300, wiring or rewiring typically falls between $536 and $2,111. This will depend on how much, what type of work you need done, and how long it will take an electrician to complete.", "How Much Does It Cost To Build A Pool In Ventura? The price of installation, of an in-ground pool, in Ventura, reasonably runs right around $30.000." ]

[ "A case has been registered against senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh for his alleged derogatory remarks against UP Chief Minister Mayawati during a poll rally here on Tuesday." ]

[ "Senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh in Gwalior on Sunday slammed veteran anti-graft crusader Anna Hazare for allegedly using foul language against politicians.", "Congress leader Digvijay Singh on Thursday faced the wrath of BJP workers protesting against price hike while he was waiting to board Rajdhani Express for New Delhi at Mugalsarai railway station.", "Lt Gen Tejinder Singh Tuesday filed a criminal defamation case against army chief Gen VK Singh in a Delhi court following allegations of bribery over a defence deal against him.", "Bhushan said that Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh was also involved in the 2G scam among other top functionaries.", "Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh on Friday defended RSS pracharak Sanjay Joshi, who quit the BJP following pressures from Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.", "The Enforcement Directorate filed a chargesheet against former Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda on Friday in connection with the hawala transactions and the illegal investments case registered against him.", "Congress leader Digvijay Singh today targeted CAG Vinod Rai suggesting he has a political agenda like one of his controversial predecessors TN Chaturvedi, who had given a report on Bofors issue and soon after joined the BJP.", "Congress General Secretary and in charge of Uttar Pradesh affairs Digvijay Singh on Tuesday said the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee Chairman Suresh Kalmadi should resign if found guilty in the ongoing probe into irregularities in the CWG funds utilisation.", "New Delhi, Feb 26 Amidst high drama, Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh Thursday finally deposed in a city court in a two-year-old cheating case registered by him.", "A case was registered by police against senior BJD leader and former Odisha minister Sarada Nayak and his supporters in connection with an alleged assault on a man here today, police said.", "Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh today fired a fresh salvo at the BJP for backing Nitin Gadkari, reminding that its president had defended former Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yeddyurppa over the corruption issue.", "While stating that it extended moral support to Ramdev's fast, the BJP on Saturday hit back at Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh for reportedly branding the yoga guru an ''RSS agent.", "Lawyer Prashant Bhushan on Friday said he will file a contempt of court case against Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh and police officials in connection with the controversial CD purportedly featuring his father and prominent jurist Shanti Bhushan.", "Former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, who is also the Chairman of the state Congress's Campaign Committee on Saturday said that the cases being registered against him by the Parkash Singh Badal led SAD-BJP government in the state would not browbeat him into submission.", "Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh on Wednesday indicated that the government could force-feed members of Team Anna if they continue their indefinite fast in support of their demand for a strong anti-graft Jan Lokpal bill.", "Union sports minister Jitendra Singh on Monday said that appropriate action will be taken against Olympic bronze-medallist Vijender Singh only if the boxer is found guilty in the drug scandal that has rocked Indian boxing.", "Police is likely to register case on Thursday against Nirmal Baba for propagating superstition.", "AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh on Saturday gave a clean chit to Shashi Tharoor while appreciating the role of Lalit Modi in establishing the IPL.", "Tour drops its doping case against Vijay Singh The PGA Tour dropped its doping case against Vijay Singh on Tuesday based on new information from the World Anti-Doping Agency, which said using deer antler spray is no longer prohibited because it contains such small amounts of a growth hormone factor.", "Babbar joined the Congress at a rally here in the presence of senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh and state party president Rita Bahuguna Joshi.", "Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh has said that time has come for politicians of his age to retire from the field.", "Charges were framed against 78-year-old Singh, Union Minister for Small, Micro and Medium Industries, and his wife under Section 120 B of IPC and Sections 7,11 and 13 of Prevention of Corruption Act dealing with bribery and criminal misconduct.", "PTI / Hyderabad January 03, 2013, 22:45 A case has been filed against VHP leader Praveen Togadia by the police for allegedly making inflammatory statements during his visit to the city recently and a complaint was filed against him in a local court on the charge of making provocative remarks against a particular community.", "Ambala, Nov 10 The Central Bureau of Investigation Wednesday told a court here that it wants to close two criminal cases registered against jailed former Haryana police chief SPS Rathore due to lack of evidence.", "The Punjab and Haryana high court on Thursday confirmed the bail of former Punjab agriculture minister Tota Singh in a corruption case.", "Mumbai, Aug 29 Maintaining that terrorism had ``no colour'' and that the Congress party was very clear on the issue, senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh today accused RSS activists of being involved in ``some'' bomb blasts in the country.", "A case has been registered against the Congress nominee from Sirsaganj Assembly seat after his supporters allegedly indulged in brick-batting and chased away a team led by a government official, who objected to putting up of flags and banners here.", "Lucknow , Apr 4 Cases have been filed against an independent nominee from Firozabad and BJP candidate from Amethi for alleged violation of model code of conduct, home department sources said here today.", "A case was filed in a local court in Bihar against spiritual leader Asaram Bapu for his controversial remark in the Delhi gangrape case and the court has taken cognisance of it.", "Even as Anna Hazare revived his Lokpal agitation today by holding a one-day hunger strike in New Delhi, Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh observed that corruption will not end merely by framing a law and there is a need for a strong willpower to curb it.", "A 109-page chargesheet has been filed by the Mumbai police against Bollywood actor Shiney Ahuja accusing him of rape, wrongful confinement and threatening his domestic servant.", "The CBI is likely to file its first chargesheet in the Adarsh housing scam on Tuesday against some of the members of the upscale society, 18 months after a case was registered in this connection." ]

[ "Just recieved my order. The kibble is now flat dots, not X's. The formula/ingredients is very different. Now Chicken, chicken meal, cracked barley, chicken fat, turkey meal, white rice, potatoies, oatmeal, millet, natural chicken flavor, salmon, turkey, duck, ocean fish meal, flaxseed, sodium bisulgate egg product..................<br /><br />I called the phone number on the bag and only got a recording to \"leave a message\". This is bait and switch.<br /><br />My cats looked at it and walked away." ]

[ "Any edible bone can cause a dog to choke, but Greenies changed their formula about a year ago to make it more digestible. I love the product.", "I am a huge milk chocolate conoisseur/fan, sampling some of the best chocolate from around the globe over the years. I am a huge fan of Lindt (Switzerland), Lacta (Greece), Milka (Switzerland), Perugina (Italy), and many other premium and even expensive brands. Despite these, I am a huge fan of Hershey's milk chocolate, because of it's unique, signature taste. Also, Hershey's has not apparently changed or 'watered down' their formula like Nestle's has. In fact, many chocolate companies have changed to cheaper ingredients to cut costs, such as Nestle's. Hershey's has seemingly always stuck to their original formula, and it truly rivals the best the world has to offer because of it's unique flavor. Long live Hershey's milk chocolate! It rivals some of the world's best!", "My Black Lab has been eating Canidae All Life Stages dry dog food since we switched her from puppy food to Canidae in early 2006. Our breeder recommended this dog food. She did well on the old formula, except for what we THOUGHT were seasonal hot spots where she would chew the hair off of the insides of her legs and also her behind.<br /><br />Since purchasing my latest bag about three weeks ago she has been throwing up, having frequent burping which smells of vomit, having horribly smelly flatulance, and I had to clean my carpet from a poop accident two days ago.<br /><br />I was initially just upset to find that my latest bag had been down-sized from 40 lbs. to 35 lb. I sent an e-mail telling them that I would rather pay more for something than have it down-sized. Their response was :<br /><br />\"Our economy and industry is faced with challenging times, commodities and energy cost are at an all time high and continue to sky rocket.\"<br /><br />They ended their response with this condescending comment :<br /><br />\"We have also had a lot of positive feedback from our women shoppers who love the new sizes as they can handle them much better when unloading them from their car.\"<br /><br />After talking with my dog's breeder, I discovered that the formula had been changed and that her dogs and many other breeders' dogs had been having problems with the new formula. The \"Canidae Team\" didn't mention the formula change when I asked them about the down-sizing. That would have been nice.<br /><br />So, I started searching the internet and found more horror stories of dogs becoming sick with the new formula. Plus, many dog owners were upset that Canidae did not make much of an effort to inform their customers of the new formula change.<br /><br />I sent another e-mail to Canidae regarding the formula change, their lack of informing their customers about it, and how my dog has been reacting to it. They didn't address my comments about how it was making my dog and others sick, they just stated that they did their best to post their changes on the internet. From what I have been reading in posts, that is not the case. I also found out through forum postings on the internet that Canidae is now in partnership with Diamond Pet Foods. Diamond was involved in the dog food recalls where dogs were dying from the tainted food. Maybe since the recall and deaths, Diamond has cleaned up their act and has more stringent guidelines and inspections but who wants to take that chance when it comes to our beloved dogs?", "If I could give this product no stars I would. We have been giving this dog food to our dogs for years. But for the past month or so when the formula was changed and put on the shelf our dog has been having an allergic reaction to something. At first we thought it was just allergies as dogs like humans, change as they get older. As he was the only one to have problems. We tried cleaning our patio on a daily basis. Bought new food and water bowls to stainless steel. Wash the water bowl as much as possible.<br /><br />We even took him to the vet NUMEROUS times. Our vet, which has been practicing for over 25 years and is the best in our area was puzzled when nothing worked. Our dog started to lose his fur, has odd looking spots all over, under his chin he has open sores that do not go away no matter how much we wash and put medicine on it, and he's consistently scraching and making it worse. In between his toes it's red and inflamed, in his ears are a bright red color like a rash. Lastly, he hasn't been eating as much and has been having diarreah. A week later our other dog broke out in hives and had to be rushed to the emergency room. They gave her shots and they slowly went away. But now she is starting to experience the same problems as our other dog.<br /><br />The last time we went down to the pet store to pick up his food we over heard other customers yelling about the food making their dog sick. We heard all of the same symptoms as I just described above and the shop owner didn't know why and has taken the food off of the shelf, and had given them a refund. We decided to not buy any more canidae but to go online and do some research.<br /><br />We have found out that Canidae has changed their formula and has added many new ingredients. All of which are grains such as millet, that MOST dogs are allergic to. We have found other forums of people describing the same issues that they're having with their dogs just like we are. When we called customer service they did nothing and blamed us for our dogs reaction to the food. When I asked how is it our fault for your inadequte labeling on the bag in which the food is in when we buy it? And how is it our fault when we've been using your dog food for the last 7 years? There was no response, the \"customer service representative\" if you can call her that, simply said \"if you don't like it then don't buy it.\" And then she hung up on me.<br /><br />The bag never changed it's appearance nor did they add any \"stickers\" to indicate a change in their formula. If there had been I would have checked to make sure that what they changed it to wouldn't affect my dogs, or at the very lest I would have known what signs to watch for and change this terrible food to something different if they had a reaction as they did. I feel this horrible company should have to pay for my vet bills as they did not inform us the consumers of their changes. I understand I choose to have pets, and purchase their foods, but I did not choose to change a formula that was fine just the way it was. Could the reason for changing the formula was to make it cheaper for them to produce?? How about just increasing the price of the dog food if that was the case, because I would have kept purchasing it. Should they see the light and go back to their old formula my family will never purchase it again just like the many others that I'm sure will not.<br /><br />I have now chosen a food for them that is GRAIN FREE and they are now starting to chow down like they once did. We will have a long recovery road ahead for our male dog as his coat and face has it the worst. My hope is that anyone looking to buy this food find out about what the formula has done to others animals like mine before they buy it.", "GREAT GREAT GREAT PRODUCT! The milk is GOD SENT for babies with sensitive tummies, who cannot take cow milk and/or soy. My 3-months old daughter had reflux, high acid level in her tummy, colics, gas and constipation varying with diarrhea. My husband and I are both foreign residents in Switzerland and I have to say that Swiss formula market is apolling in terms of choice, and useless doctors just kept medicating her instead of changing the cow milk formula to something more appropriate, just gave her more and more different drugs which only added to the problem. At some point she was crying all day long for several days!! I stopped listening to the doctors and did some online research- tried soy milk formula and lactose free formula (both Nestle), no changes. I tried all 3-4 cow milk formulas available on the Swiss market (Adapta, Holle, Milupa, Nestle) - no changes!<br />Finally I found a can of Meyenberg goat powder milk in the house, which I had bought previously for my organic cosmetics hobby- and gave it a try in a pure desperation. WHAT A CHANGE! She is like a different baby. ALL PROBLEMS GONE INSTANTLY- on the same day. I took the baby off all the medications these so-called specialists were overmedicating her with ( I am changing the pediatrician as well), and she feels perfect and is happier than I've ever seen her. I am stashing up with this milk now for a long time, as no Meyenberg milk is sold locally. Would highly recommend this product to all parents looking for a healthy solution for their babies- goat milk protein is much easier to digest by small tummies. Furthermore, historically, long before any commercial baby formulas were invented, goat milk (and NOT cow milk!!! soy was not even on the menu) was used for centuries to feed babies by mothers who could not breastfeed. Today, when everything is Marketing-driven and cow milk manufacturers are dominating the market, this fact is totally forgotten, and all of a sudden other products are advertised to be appropriate (on top of that commercial brands stuff their formulas with all sorts of ingredients and chemicals their imagination can come up with- no matter if good for babies or not). The Meyenberg goat milk has few, simple ingredients which do not overwhelm small tummies, it is fantastically nutricious, natural and tasty. My daughter cannot get enough of it- I never saw her having such a healthy appetite towards any other milk she was given.<br /><br />The only request to the seller (the Vitamine Shoppe - actually one of the most professional sellers on Amazon)- please please please speed up your order processing! Although it arrived earlier than estimated (7 days instead of estimated 9 days after the order was placed), but the order processing itself took 5 days before it was actually shipped by expedited shipping. This is far too long, if the baby cannot eat anything else. If you could process orders faster- it would help a lot!<br />Thank you very much for shipping this product to Switzerland anyway (I think it is almost the only reliable seller who does)- it's a life savior." ]

[ "Either Velkhana from Monster Hunter: World or Twin Princes from Dark Souls 3. I've spent more time on the latter, but I still haven't beaten the former. Also, I'm aware those aren't the toughest enemies in their respective games. That would probably be Fatalis and Friede respectively." ]

[ "When you kill a boss in a video game and you have almost no health left.", "Epic boss fight.", "When you beat that boss you have been fighting for hours in a game.", "Do people have sex? What kind of video game is that", "What is a dad video game franchise?", "Beating difficult games on a difficult difficulty", "pyramids with sherk\"s face", "Because faces are difficult to draw", "It is difficult to rattle their cage. They have contingency plans for most common lesser and greater disasters, and in general remain calm and composed in the face of adversity.", "Dark souls, honestly gives you a new view and appreciation for game design and boss fights. Or bare minimum it just makes you a bit more patient", "Video Games", "Buying the video game you want.", "Shows what you know. I play video games with my dad all the time.", "If a girl has a pretty face and big boobs she can play video games and become famous", "video games and this", "On the original Playstation and the video game Driver - first level in the parking garage. They made the first level so hard that most of the rest of the game just kinda fell into place.", "Video Games and alcohol.", "Doesn’t matter what game. When it’s the final boss I get all my potions, all my buffs, everything only to not use a single potion cause “what if I need them later in the fight”", "There was a Reddit post recently that hit it perfectly\n\n\nIt's like in a video game where there's ominous music playing because you are about to run into a boss or something bad is happening. Except there is no boss. There is no threat. Yet the ominous music keeps playing.", "Video games and DLCs", "+18 video games. Swear most people forget those pegi logos even existed.", "Music and video games", "Fighting Alex jones as if he was a dark souls 3 boss.", "Botw, amazing game, lots of exploring and not that difficult", "Indie video games", "I like punching my boss in the face", "https://oldgamesdownload.com/\n\nThis website has every single pc game from the 70's,80's,90's till the early 2000's. I've found so many lost games there you actually couldn't imagine. The amazing part? It has step by step instructions for every game that you want to download and it's FREE! There is a search tab too so don't worry,you won't have to search for hours for that 1 game that you played in your childhood ;)\n\nEdit:thank you kind strangers:D hope you found the games that you searched for!", "violent video games", "Most of us have a difficult enough time getting even one partner...", "Playing video games", "Lego and video games", "Hollowknight. Because for some reason when I started it I *just couldn't*" ]

[ "<em>All Things Considered</em> host Melissa Block talks to Jake Sherman of political news site <em>Politico</em> about the report that last August, during a fact-finding Congressional trip to Israel, freshman Republican lawmakers went for a late-night swim — one of them naked — in the Sea of Galilee. The Federal Bureau of Investigation ended up looking into what happened." ]

[ "Good morning. Our early headlines: -- In Afghanistan, A Struggle To Stem Deaths From 'Insider Attacks.' -- Missouri GOP Senate Candidate's Remarks On Rape Stir Controversy. -- 'I Function Off Fear,' Said Director Tony Scott, Who Died Sunday. -- Congressman Who Took Nude Dip In Sea Of Galilee Apologizes. -- Wife Of Ex-Chinese Official Given Suspended Death Sentence. Other stories in the news: -- \"Intense Fighting Rages In Aleppo.\" (The Associated Press) -- \"Pew! Pew! Pew! NASA's Curiosity Rover Zaps Mars Rock With Laser.\" (Space.com) -- \"Pakistan President Orders Probe Into Christian Girl's Blasphemy Case.\" (Los Angeles Times) -- \"Myanmar Government Abolishes Direct Media Censorship.\" (Reuters) -- Diana Dyad \"Feeling Strong\" During Latest Attempt To Make Cuba-To-Keys Swim. (CNN.com)", "Newly elected Majority Leader John Boehner and House Republicans are on the Eastern Shore of Maryland for a retreat. Boehner is hoping to unify his party, which has fragmented recently in the face of lobbying scandals and National Security Agency wiretapping concerns.", "When Republicans attack; an American Berlusconi; an out-of-this world claim.", "NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports from Korazim that Pope John Paul II celebrated his largest mass yet in the Holy Land, preaching on the shores of the Sea of Galilee in the exact spot that Jesus is said to have delivered his Sermon on the Mount. Tens of thousands of mostly young people attended.", "Officials at a nature preserve in Italy say a deer with a single horn in the center of his head was born with a genetic flaw. Or maybe it's a modern-day clue into the myth of the unicorn. It's the BPP's Most. Food gardens a growing trend / Naked pilot, flight attendant face fines over Pa. woods romp / Loch Ness monster quest nears end / Marine expelled over YouTube puppy video", "With the Sea of Galilee at its lowest level in years, Israel is facing a fresh water crisis. As the nation's other water sources also shrink, the government is taking steps some say may be environmentally unsound. NPR's Linda Gradstein reports. (3:25)", "The Republican candidates spoke to the national Republican Jewish Coalition Wednesday in Washington, D.C. They all showed support for Israel while slamming President Obama's Mideast policy.", "Saying he apologizes for \"any embarrassment I have caused for my colleagues and constituents,\" Kansas Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder has confirmed a Politico report that he was the \"nude member of Congress\" who took a dip in the Sea of Galilee last year during a late-night escapade \"that involved drinking [and] numerous GOP freshmen lawmakers.\" According to Politico: \"During a fact-finding congressional trip to the Holy Land last summer ... Yoder took off his clothes and jumped into the sea, joining a number of members, their families and GOP staff during a night out in Israel ... sources told POLITICO. Other participants, including the daughter of another congressman, swam fully clothed, while some lawmakers partially disrobed. More than 20 people took part in the late-night dip in the sea, according to sources who were participants in the trip.\" As The Kansas City Star reminds its readers this morning, \"Christians consider the Sea of Galilee a holy site; it is where the Bible says Jesus walked on water.\" Yoder told the Star that: \"Part of the reason I made that decision at that moment was there was really nobody in the vicinity who could see me. ... I dove in, hopped right back out, put my clothes on and, regardless, that was still not the behavior people expected out of their congressman.\" According to the Star, the congressman said he remained in the water for about 10 seconds. Politico says that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., was on the trip as well. He apparently was not among the group that went to the Sea of Galilee. Politico says that Cantor \"was so upset about the antics that he rebuked the 30 lawmakers the morning after the Aug. 18, 2011, incident, saying they were distracting from the mission of the trip.\" Yoder is running unopposed for a second term.", "Host Howard Berkes talks to NPR's Jennifer Ludden about Pope John Paul's pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Today the Pope celebrated mass on a hillside overlooking the Sea of Galilee the site where it is believed that Jesus preached his Sermon on the Mount.", "House Republicans are taking a three-day retreat this week, paid in part by a lobbyist-run institute. Members of the group get access to the lawmakers at the closed-door event on Maryland's Eastern Shore.", "This is a band to watch this year. The members of Freelance Whales (okay, it's not the greatest name, but there's a great story behind it involving frontman Judah Dadone's early childhood in Jerusalem and a near-drowning in the Sea of Galilee) make incredibly infectious, jubilant music with soaring, five-part harmonies, banjo, harmonium, glockenspiel, acoustic guitar and lots of soulful energy. The group, cobbled together in Brooklyn after Dadone placed an ad in Craigslist, has only been playing together for about a year and a half. But it's already put together an inspired debut called Weathervanes, due out in April on Frenchkiss/Mom + Pop Records, a label that's rapidly becoming one of our favorites at NPR Music. For this shoot, the band met us at the historic Driskill Hotel in Austin and played three cuts from the new record. \"Generator 2nd Floor\" \"Generator 1st Floor\" \"Ghosting\"", "California Republicans suffered their worst drubbing since Watergate in last year's elections, and some blamed their showing on the dominance of Christian conservatives in the party. In response, a new political action committee has been formed for the express purpose of supporting economic conservatives -- not social conservatives -- on the road to Republican recovery. But as NPR's Steven Rosenfeld reports, Christian conservatives argue that any GOP group that seeks to exclude them does so at its own peril.", "The Republican Party acknowledges sending mass mailings to residents of two states warning that liberals seek to ban the Bible. From the Senate floor, Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Blanche Lincoln (D-ARK) call for an apology. NPR's David Welna reports.", "NPR's Linda Gradstein reports that representatives of all those who helped give birth in Oslo to what is now known as the Middle East peace process gathered by the sea of Galilee today to commemorate the third anniversary of their historic meeting in Norway. Representatives from Norway were there. Representatives of the PLO were there. Even former Prime Minister Peres was there. But none showed from the current Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, who chose to ignore it as, so far, he has ignored the peace process itself.", "You might not like your fava beans prepared the way Hannibal Lecter made them in the 1991 thriller Silence of the Lambs. But they can be delightful pureed or sauteed. The bright green veggie, which also goes by \"broad bean\" and other names, is a key staple in much of the word. It's also the third most important legume for livestock behind the soybean and the humble pea. According to archaeologists and archaeobotanists, humans have been eating these beans for many millennia. In a paper published online this week in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers say they've found the world's oldest domesticated fava beans in sites in the central-southern Levant, now the Galilee area of northern Israel. The most ancient beans were carbon dated to over 10,000 years ago. Farming, mostly of grains, had already taken hold around the region by this time. \"In the Jordanian plateau and in Syria, we see that cereals were domesticated long before,\" says Dr. Kobi Vardi of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who oversaw the excavations analyzed in the new study. But Vardi and his colleagues say the fava discovery indicates that the Neolithic people of these settlements between the Mediterranean and the Sea of Galilee may have preferred beans. \"What we know now is that in the Galilee, pulses were domesticated long before wheat and barley.\" Beans, or pulses, are high in protein. And Vardi says early farmers probably struggled to get enough protein in their diet. That said, it's hard to know how the favas might have affected their nutrition. \"We don't have skeletons,\" says study co-author Dr. Elisabetta Boaretto of Israel's Weizmann Institute. \"So we don't know their DNA. These were people who hadn't yet invented pottery, so how they ate these [beans], how they cooked them — these are good questions.\" Determining when specific plants were domesticated can get controversial in scientific circles. But Vardi says the number of fava beans found in the Galilee sites bolsters the study's claims. And although the beans were discovered in storage areas, all had been burned. Boaretto says there is no evidence indicating a specific catastrophe. But if nothing else, that did allow the ancient beans to be discovered today, preserved as essentially charcoal.", "Republicans are trying to find their way in the wake of their second consecutive presidential defeat and immediately they take advantage of the opportunity: Marco Rubio, chosen to respond to Obama's State of the Union address, decides Tupac is not a political action committee. Plus: Karl Rove's group plays sides in GOP primaries, and we remember Ed Koch.", "When you go to the Dead Sea for a float in its extraordinarily buoyant waters, signs warn you not to drink a drop. \"Did you swallow water?\" one Dead Sea do's and don'ts list asks. \"Go immediately to the lifeguard.\" I've never sipped the stuff, but on one visit — it's less than an hour's drive from Jerusalem, between Israel, Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank — I did pry several chunks of salt off an encrusted rock along the shore and took them home in a plastic cup. I thought they might grind up nicely and add an exotic taste, plus an interesting conversation piece, to our table. But one big lick changed my plans. The salt burned my tongue a bit, like the Dead Sea water does to cuts on your body when you're floating. My casually harvested chunks also left a bitter aftertaste at the back of my throat. So when I heard about someone marketing Dead Sea salt as a gourmet specialty, I was curious. It turns out that Israeli entrepreneur Ari Fruchter's salt from the Dead Sea is different. He buys the basic salt from a Palestinian company, West Bank Salt, that's been in the business for decades. Dead Sea brine is pumped into ponds. Eight months of evaporation leaves rock salt crystals that can be milled for food. West Bank Salt recently began providing salt to another Israeli businessman, who flavors and packages it for local markets. Fruchter discovered this product early in his research (when he was still trying to figure out if Dead Sea salt was edible) and joined in. He created Naked Sea to market Dead Sea salt as a gourmet product internationally and direct to consumer through online specialty food sites. Naked Sea's flavors include garlic and ginger, sweet orange and chili, even carbon. Fruchter's personal favorite is Greensea, his seaweed salt offering. \"I'm crazy about sushi, so I mix that with rice,\" he says. \"That's fantastic. And I always put the Merlot salt on steak.\" Fruchter recently left a high-tech career to enter the world's growing specialty salt market. He branded his stuff Naked in honor of a controversial art project — hundreds of nude people photographed in the Dead Sea — that he did with photographer Spencer Tunick two years ago. Over the four years of preparing that project, Fruchter faced political pressure from conservative religious political leaders and a local partner who pulled out of all logistic management at the last minute. \"I was almost dead afterward, it took so much out of me,\" Fruchter says. \"And I realized that by virtue of what I did, I became one of the biggest Dead Sea evangelists in the world.\" Fruchter first became aware of how unique and fragile the Dead Sea environment is during the photography project. He plans to support environmental research with a percentage of salt sales. The Dead Sea is the lowest place on Earth. And it's getting lower: Water levels are receding, worrying many environmentalists, as well as spa owners, whose businesses tap into beauty products made from Dead Sea minerals and mud. Bath and beauty products from the Dead Sea have always touted health benefits. So does Naked Sea Salt. \"Salt from the Dead Sea contains 32 different minerals, 21 of which are uniquely concentrated in this salt, in higher levels than in any other,\" the company says in marketing materials. \"All of these are important to your body. Minerals like: magnesium, calcium, iron, potassium, manganese and zinc.\" But nutrition scientists say the claimed benefits of higher levels of even important minerals should be taken with a big grain of you-know-what. Most sodium people eat — about 70 percent — comes from hidden salt in processed food, says Richard Wood, a professor of nutrition at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The rest is from naturally occurring sodium. Just a bit in our diets comes from the shaker. Even if someone ingested the maximum amount of sodium a body could take in one day exclusively from Naked Sea Salt, Wood calculates that the amounts of potassium, calcium, magnesium and other important minerals would be too low — often less than 1 percent of the recommended daily allowance — to make any difference to a person's health. \"Either very minimal, or uncertain,\" says Wood, who based his analysis on a lab report Naked Sea got of its salt's mineral content. But one reason there are higher mineral concentrations is because Dead Sea salt has less sodium than regular table salt — almost half as much. \"This is a good thing,\" he says. Oh, and there's one more mineral in Dead Sea salt that I should note: bromide, which Naked Sea mentions in its FAQ. Bromide is a mineral that occurs naturally in ocean water, and at much higher concentrations in the Dead Sea — thousands of parts per million versus 65, says Mokoto Mukai of Cornell University's Department of Food Science. Bromide can potentially cause health problems, although Mukai notes that an average adult can safely consume about 24 milligrams a day. Naked Sea's Fruchter says consumers shouldn'", "What should the government pay for? On today's Planet Money, we pose that question to Charlie Wheelan, author of the book Naked Economics, and one-time Congressional candidate. (He lost). He gives us the econ 101 answer: The government should definitely pay for something if it's a public good, which Charlie defines as ... something that we all need that will make our lives better, but the market will not and cannot provide The textbook example is a lighthouse. Why should any given sea captain pay for a lighthouse? As Wheelan says, if somebody refuses to pay, we can't say, \"Close your eyes when you sail past this rocky point.\" Other examples of public goods include national defense and autopsies. Everyone benefits from the medical knowledge autopsies provide, but it's not really in any individual's interest to pay for an autopsy. Somehow, this fact leads us to call 1-800-AUTOPSY. Note: Today's podcast originally aired in 2010. Subscribe to the podcast. Music: Alabama Shakes' \"Hold On.\" Find us: Twitter/ Facebook/ Spotify.", "Republican voters in Virginia Beach, Va., respond to news of an impeachment inquiry into President Trump's discussions with Ukraine's president.", "Republican Sen. Larry Craig, of Idaho, earned an unwanted spotlight for about his guilty plea in connection with lewd behavior. Also, Congress resumes session as new information suggests that poverty in America is declining. Democratic pollster Ron Lester and Patrick Sammon, president of the Log Cabin Republicans analyze the week in politics.", "A group of moderate Republicans blow off some steam and get ready for reelection; The U.S. gets a new friend in Europe; A self-destructing star not named Britney, Paris or Lindsay.", "A German travel agency is offering flights for vacationers who want to travel naked. The destination is a Baltic Sea resort popular with German nudists. Clothing is required until takeoff — at which point travelers can take it ALL off.", "<em>How Jesus Became God</em> looks at how a Jewish preacher from Galilee was transformed into a deity. It debuts at No. 12.", "NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Oregon Republican state Sen. Tim Knopp about GOP senators walking out of the state Capitol, and going in to hiding to protest a climate bill.", "Both Republicans and Democrats have taken up battle stations after allegations that former Florida Rep. Mark Foley had taken part in sexually explicit electronic communication with teenage boys. Also, Bob Woodward's latest book about the Bush administration is sending ripples around Washington.", "For a Republican Party with no majority, no leader and no brand name, it was a pretty good week on Capitol Hill. Democrats joined the GOP in putting the brakes on President Obama's plan to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and Republicans successfully attached pro-gun legislation to a popular credit card bill.", "It's the first Saturday of the month and time again for the National Story Project. This week, Paul Auster reads a story by Roger Brinkenhoff of Galilee, Pennsylvania. it's called REFLECTIONS ON A HUBCAP", "Republican congressional leaders had hoped to spend this week campaigning for the midterm elections, which are five weeks away. Instead, they are struggling to contain the fallout over Mark Foley, the Florida congressman who sent sexually explicit messages to a former page.", "Formed in 2013, Ireland quartet The Jeremiahs are spreading their original, urban Irish folk music far and wide across Ireland, Europe and to the States. While describing the band during its first appearance on Mountain Stage, host Larry Groce said The Jeremiahs have \"great songs, emotional vocals, masterful guitar and fiddle / flute conversations that work like fine embroidery ... \" The Jeremiahs' musicianship is on full display from the start, with its fanciful, braided musical work on the spirited romp, \"Wild Barrow Road,\" and lead vocalist Joe Gibney passionately singing this cinematic tune under a whitewater-like torrent of guitar, fiddle and flute. Downshifting to the serious side of its songwriting, The Jeremiahs got the audience involved straight away, breaking open their hearts with \"Passage West,\" a song with a sing-along chorus about two lovers from County Cork, Ireland, and what happens when one takes passage to America. Uniquely comprised of two gents from Dublin (Gibney and guitarist James Ryan) and two from the Bordeaux region of France (flutist Julien Bruneteau and fiddle player JC Morel), The Jeremiahs showcased the band's unique blend in a bubbly contemporary instrumental, \"Spring Fling.\" The song seemed to usher in the energy of the season a couple weeks early, though Gibney gave fair warning to the crowd that \"A spring fling can lead to a bleak winter.\" It could be seen as purely \"un-Irish\" to stay too happy for too long, however, so Gibney shared a poignant song of family tragedy. \"This is a nod to all men to talk about how they feel,\" Gibney said before singing \"Water's Edge,\" a song of sorrow about his great uncle Robert, whose body was found years ago in a river in Dublin after a hard night drinking. After the melodic instrumental romp, \"A Summer Night,\" The Jeremiahs closed with a furious journey aboard Ewan MacColl's sea shanty, \"North Sea Holes,\" getting the standing ovation that Gibney fished for earlier. \"...There's no pressure but a standing ovation at the end would be nice. That works about eight out of 10 times,\" Gibney said as the crowd roared with laughter. SET LIST \"The Wild Barrow Road\" \"Passage West\" \"Spring Fling\" \"Water's Edge\" \"A Summer Night\" \"North Sea Holes\" MUSICIANS Joe Gibney: lead vocals; Julien Bruneteau: flute and vocals; JC Morel: fiddle and vocals; James Ryan: guitar and vocals.", "House and Senate Republicans are huddling at a retreat in Baltimore. They're talking policy and strategy and how that will be affected by a tumultuous election year.", "Democratic members of Congress are asking what the Republican leadership knew, and when, of allegations against Rep. Mark Foley of Florida. Foley abruptly resigned Friday after ABC News confronted the Republican with sexually explicit electronic communications he allegedly sent to teenage boys.", "The Republican Party's convention platform opposes gay marriage. Among the special offers the GOP arranged for the delegates who'll vote on that platform -- cheap tickets to a show with an openly gay theme. About a dozen people used the special Republican code to buy discounted tickets to <EM>Naked Boys Singing</EM> before embarrassed GOP officials ended the offer." ]

[ "Who is Shahrukh Khan of Hollywood?" ]

[ "Which is Shahrukh Khan's best movie?", "Why do some people hate Shahrukh Khan so much?", "Which is the best Shahrukh Khan movie and why?", "Why do people hate Shahrukh Khan and why do people feel that he is not an Indian?", "Who is salman khan?", "What is it like to work with Shah Rukh Khan?", "Why is Shah Rukh Khan such a huge superstar?", "Is Bollywood actor Amir Khan a Shia or Sunni Muslim?", "What is Shah Rukh Khan's best movie till date and why?", "Why is Salman Khan so overrated in India?", "What are some good things about Salman Khan?", "Why is Aamir Khan so popular in China?", "Who is Sachin Tendulkar?", "How good are Khan Academy's courses?", "Is it true another AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan has been arrested in sexual harassment case?", "Which is the best movie of Salman Khan?", "Was Khizr Khan paid to speak at the Democratic National Convention?", "Is Khan Academy useful for engineering students?", "What are some unknown facts about srk?", "What is Jeffery Kearns' opinion on Khan Academy?", "What's your view on Salman Khan throwing Priyanka Jagga out of the Bigg Boss house?", "Who is Ajay Chandrakar?", "Why is Aamir Khan not attending any awards functions?", "Why doesn't Salman Khan retire?", "What is your review of Amir Khan's new movie \"Dangal\"?", "Why does Aamir Khan cry in movie screenings, Satyamev Jayate etc?", "What it is like to meet \"Shahid Kapoor\"?", "Who is Bollywood's most underrated actor?", "Who is a better singer and why: Mika Singh or Kailash Kher?", "Why is King Shantanu famous?", "What is Arnab Goswami doing nowadays and what could be his plans for 2017?", "What are unknown facts and figures about Sachin Tendulkar?" ]

[ "Mostly a trading relationship while it was ruled by the Ryukyu Kingdom, but then a tributary state under China before Japan's annexation. Source: Okamoto, Hiromichi (2008), \"Foreign Policy and Maritime Trade in the Early Ming Period Focusing on the Ryukyu Kingdom\", Acta Asiatica 95. 2nd source: EU4" ]

[ "Wow! What a great topic! 1. What was the process of \"colonization\" by Japan? Do you think \"colonization\" is a useful term here? What about something like \"Japanification\"? 2. One trend I think I have picked up in East Asian studies is a desire to find \"Mediterraneans\", that is, discrete marginal sea zones with understandable patterns of integration and exchange. I often see the East China Sea being brought up as a sort of \"East Asian Mediterranean\", so what role did the Okinawans play in this? 3. I feel like I have heard the Ryukyu as tributaries to China. How did this work with the process of their conquest by Japan? This might be part of my first question.", "(2) As to your second question, Japanese right-wing nationalist groups hailed the annexation of Korea as being important step to fulfilling Japan's 'manifest destiny' as the 'Father of the asian civilizations'. James Bradley, *The Imperial Cruise* People like Miura Goro, the Japanese Ambassador who admitted to organizing the assassination of the Korean Empress Myeongseoung, were regarded as heroic, and he was subsequently acquitted at trial due to lack of evidence. Henry Chung, *The Case of Korea: A collection of evidence on the Japanese domination of Korea* Koreans came to be viewed as cheap labor opportunities for the zaibatsu. Also, criminal groups viewed it as an opportunity for expansion, with a red light district quickly established in Seoul. Chung at 150.", "At the end of WWII, Japan was required to return all territory they had taken from other countries. Dokdo/Takeshima was on the early drafts of the list, but a Japanese delegation got to Dean Rusk and persuaded him to take it off the list. Korea was without a sovereign government or ambassadors at the time, so they didn't get a voice in it. However, Korea has old maps and Japanese government records that they say proves Japan regarded it as Korean before the occupation. Japan also has old records that they say proves the opposite, so it's a stalemate. Korea has de facto occupancy of Dokdo and Ulleung, though, and there is no sign of them giving it up.", "Korea was annexed in 1910 while he was a Lieutenant, so no one asked him or cared. _URL_0_", "The Japanese occupied Korea and many parts of China from around the turn of the century (early 1900s) Korea was considered a colony by the Japanese and it's land and resources were used at their disposal. The West viewed Korea as Japanese occupied territory, but were more focused on their own regional conflicts during WW2 and WW2. The Koreans were treated rather brutally by the Japanese. As the Japanese considered them to be lesser beings than themselves. Many were slaves, some women were enlisted as comfort women for Japanese soldiers during the occupation, and the Japanese or Japanese controlled Koreans ran every level of government. After the war in the Pacific closed, part of Japan's unconditional surrender was that there were to leave their colonies in Korea, Manchuria, Mainland China, and South East Asia, thus shrinking the Japanese Empire significantly.", "This has been asked several time before, but [here](_URL_1_) is one whose top-level answers aren't about Japan and China. [Here](_URL_0_)'s another one.", "I can only speak as a Taiwan native, and I can't say anything about Korea, but Taiwan's relationship with Japan is pretty complicated and nuanced. Yes, the Taiwanese were taxed more, and forced to speak Japanese, and killed without reason, but we also got significant advancements in education and other areas because of Japanese influence. Also, I think much of the enmity (because there is Taiwanese enmity towards the Japanese just as there is goodwill) is traced to events such as the Rape of Nanjing. Though it happened in China, it occurred before the Chinese Civil War and thus affected a lot of the \"second-wave\" families that have since migrated to Taiwan.", "Not to discourage further responses, but u/aonoreishou answered a similar question [here](_URL_0_).", "Well they sort of bombed Pearl Harbor... Before Japan had been actively engaged in an imperialist, expansionist foreign policy which included annexing Korea and invading China. The US was ... unhappy about this and cut off trade relations with Japan. Japan, under a lot of strain from the lack of trade for critical resources like oil, had to make a choice. They chose to attack the UK and France (which had significant presence in SE Asia) as well as the US in order to acquire the resources and supplies they needed to maintain their new empire.", "Hey there! I went ahead and stalked through /u/AsiaExpert's comment history for this one - he made an INCREDIBLE summary of this exact question a bit over a year ago. [Here it is!](_URL_0_) I hope that helps you out :)", "During World War II, Japan invaded Korea and a part of China known as Manchuria. When Japan lost the war, Manchuria returned to China, but Korea was split up into two countries: North Korea and South Korea. North Korea was communist and South Korea was democratic. North Korea was friends with Russia and China. South Korea was friends with Europe and America. In 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea to unite them. The Russians and Chinese gave North Koreans guns, while Americans and other countries fought with the South Koreans. The war was fought, but nothing changed at the end. North Korea remained communist and South Korea reminded democratic.", "Hi there -- this question has been asked here a few times before. Not discouraging more responses, but you may be interested in these older threads: _URL_1_ and _URL_0_", "China was one of the Allies. It was \"occupied\" by its own Nationalist Chinese troops, except for the region liberated by the Soviets (Manchukuo) which had a short term Soviet postwar occupation (August '45 to May '46) before it was handed over to the Chinese Communists.", "There were many wars between Japan and China before the first sino-Japanese war. /u/Klaus_Von_Ha refers to the invasion of Korea by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, that involved the Ming armies and after the conquest of Korea (in less than two month) most of the regular battles involved Japanese soldiers facing Ming soldiers. Besides, the admited goal of Toyotomi Hideyoshi was to conquer China. We can also think about the \"Mongol invasions of Japan\", that opposed the Yuan Dynasty led by the mongols, but considered a Chinese dynasty, facing the Kamakura shogunate, in 1274 and 1281. But even before that, during the Korean Three kingdoms, Japanese armies faced Chinese armies when they both intervened on the Korean peninsula (Japan was allied to Goguryo and Baekce, China was allied with Silla).", "Followup question: could Okinawans during WW2 typically understand spoken and written Standard Japanese?", "They may have different idealogies, but from the perspective of global politics, they are on the same side. North Korea and China, and to an extent, Russia, all are not supporters of a world where the USA is a military leader/policing nation. Put simply, North Korea provides a buffer between China's border and US military bases in South Korea. If North Korea were to fall or be integrated into a USA leaning South Korea, the USA could set up bases, observatories etc much closer to China's border, and that is a big no no for China, as it gives the USA way too much potential information gathering that China doesn't approve of Furthermore, China wants to be the leader in Asia. Without supporting NK and having it fall, China's position as the dominant power in Asia would be threatened by US friendly nations such as SK and Japan", "What makes you think Japan holds animosity towards China and Korea? I mean it's obviously true in reverse, but this is the first time I've heard of this. Also the idea that Japan is a \"victim\" of WWII due to the atomic bombings is part of the Japanese narrative of the war.", "Not to discourage discussion, but [you may be interested in the writeup](_URL_0_) that /u/AsiaExpert did a few months back :)", "u/LondonSeoul is right. As with Japan and Vietnam, **Korea originated as a separate civilization from China**. The earliest Korean kingdoms were based in the Korean peninsula, while their Chinese contemporary states originated around the lower Wei River and middle Yellow River basins, several hundreds of miles west of the Korean peninsula. The first Korean kingdom of note, Gojoseon dates to the first millennium BCE, during the pre-Imperial Zhou Dynasty era in China. At this point, the Zhou had spread across the North China Plain from the Yangtze River Delta in the southeast to the Bohai Sea Rim in the northeast. China didn't expand to and annex parts of the Korean Peninsula until 108 BCE, during the Han Dynasty. Source: Cartwright, Mark. \"[Ancient Korea](_URL_0_).\" Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient History Encyclopedia, 21 Oct 2016. Web. 01 Jan 2018.", "China's government is pretty discerning about cultural imports. Japan and Korea are mass consumers, producers, importers, and exporters of pop culture.", "China, before Mao (before and during WWII), were allies to the US, since Mao's death relations have been improve with them. The UN and the US went to war with North Korea, a significant war. At the time, Korea was supported by Moaist Chinese. 100s of million of people died as a result of communists and their conquests. it wasn't trivial.", "Because when North Korea got them, it could threathen Russia, China, South Korea and Japan. Russia and China already have the bomb, and South Korea and Japan have very strong agreements with the US over staying under their nuclear umbrella. If Iran were to get them, then Saudi Arabia would build them, and then the country next to that would build them as well, resulting in a regional arms race, which given the stability of the region, can only end in disaster.", "Just for the record, since this topic has been reported to us: it is not against the rules to ask a question like this. Our readers might not *want* to answer it, but it's entirely fine to ask!", "Even with the help of the China, how did Korea go from being Japan's whipping boy, to within 5 years, being able to hold the U.S. Military to a stalemate?", "The thousands of artillery pointed at Seoul (South Korea's capital). The nuke that they posses (that doesn't even need to be long range because you know... they share a border). One of the largest army in the world that could easily step over the border. South Korea and Japan both have U.S military stationed and so China doesn't want the U.S military right at it's border and thus North Korea. China has no reason to attack North Korea.", "In the 19th century, Japan conquered and colonized Korea. After the second world war, the Allies determined that Korea should be independent of Japan. The Soviet Union occupied the northern part, the US the southern. Both the US and the Soviet Union started setting up (puppet) governements in their zones of control. The Soviet Union, however, supplied a lot of arms and military training, so the North was much more powerful than the South. In 1948, North Korea attacked South Korea and almost conquered it. Only a massive intervention of the US was able to turn the tide. Then, the US tried to conquer North Korea in turn. This was stopped by China. In the end, the war ended almost exactly where it began. The front line after the war is still the border between North and South Korea. The US continues to support the South, but nowadays the North is supported by China and no longer by the Soviet Union/Russia. Did that help?", "I am not sure about the subject/title of your post, but as for the question about were Korea and Japan better off in 1800? For the most part no. Japan westernized very quickly but that wasn't until after 1860s so it was not better off to any significant extent in 1800. Korea is probably even less likely, because when it was divided after WWII the north and the south weren't that different. In fact until the first Sino-Japanese War Korea was a tributary state to China, and after that it was in the Japanese sphere of influence.", "You might be interested in this thread: _URL_0_", "There's some previous answers on the subject _URL_0_", "I would like to add to this question by asking if East Asian governments' strong aversion to narcotics has anything to do with the Opium Wars and their aftermath. From what I understand there are very serious consequences for selling or transporting drugs in Japan, China, South Korea, Singapore, and a lot of other places.", "Hi, not to discourage further discussion, but you may be interested in this answer from a past question that deals directly with your question! _URL_0_", "Well. . . it's not really their fault. Japan annexed Korea in 1910, and the country was essentially under foreign rule from then until the partition after WWII. The half above the 38th parallel went to the USSR, which immediately set up a Soviet Civil Authority under the direction of Kim Il-sung. It was kind of all downhill from there. If the question is \"Why has North Korea gone so completely batshit crazy compared to other communist countries,\" the answer is \"It hasn't.\" Other dictatorships have gotten pretty damn weird, only they don't occupy a place of strategic importance to at least four different countries with regional if not global influence. Other tinpot dictators tend to get deposed, internally or externally, before they go full-on Pyongyang. But North Korea has the support of China, which has enabled the same bog-standard communist nutjobbery to continue unabated. Again, it's not really their fault." ]

[ "Early this month, advocates of moving California to a single-payer health care system renewed their push in Sacramento. Hundreds of them crowded into a hearing of a special state Assembly committee that's exploring whether and how to bring universal health care to the state.\nMany of the presenters at the final hearing expressed support for the concept of single-payer, but didn’t agree that the single-payer bill (SB562) shelved in the Assembly last year has enough detail to get California there in the next few years. Some key groups and lawmakers are looking at a more gradual, incremental approach.\nSome bills have already been introduced. Advocates are working on other new legislation. Many of these ideas focus on protecting California’s expansion of health coverage under the Affordable Care Act.\n5 bills in the legislature:\nSB 910 — Introduced by Senate Health Committee Chair Sen. Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina), the bill would prohibit the sale of short-term health insurance policies starting in 2019. The Trump administration ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to lift restrictions on such plans last year. On Tuesday, HHS responded by proposing a rule to expand short-term plans from less than 3 month terms to just under a year. SB 910's supporters call these short-term plans \"junk insurance\" because they don't have to cover the 10 essential benefits required by the Affordable Care Act.\nSB 974 — This bill, introduced by Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bells Gardens), would allow low-income adults who are in the U.S. illegally to sign up for Medi-Cal. Experts estimate that nearly 2 million of the 3 million uninsured Californians are in the country without legal documentation. State law already offers Medi-Cal to individuals under the age of 19 who are here illegally.\nSB 538 — Sen. Bill Monning (D-Santa Cruz) authored this bill, which would prohibit anti-competitive contracts between hospitals and insurers. Monning believes the legislation would create more price competition among health care providers.\nAB 587 — This measure would expand the state's bulk prescription drug purchasing program by allowing counties and local governments to join. The idea is that the larger group would have more purchasing power, which could push drug costs lower. Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco) authored this bill.\nAB 595 — Chair of the Assembly Health Committee, Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg) authored this bill that gives the state oversight of potential mergers between health insurance plans. California could veto the marriage of insurance carriers to avoid insurance monopolies in the state.\nIdeas that may take bill form soon:\nAnthony Wright, executive director of Health Access, testified at Wednesday’s hearing in favor of a fix to what he called the “family glitch.” People who get health insurance at work may find it too costly to include their dependents on their health plans. Wright proposed state subsidies that would help those individuals buy health care through Covered California.\nJohn Arensmeyer, CEO of Small Business Majority, encouraged lawmakers to keep Association Health Plans out of the California small group health insurance market. President Trump loosened rules governing these health plans. The president argues they spur competition. Arensmeyer and others believe these health plans offer incomplete benefits and reduce the size of the risk pools of the larger individual and group markets.\nArensmeyer also asked lawmakers to consider creating a \"public option\" that could give all Californians the opportunity to buy in to Medi-Cal. Arensmeyer argued that would create more competition between the state-run program and private health insurers.\nWright and Arensmeyer both called for offering state subsidies to ensure Californians pay no more than 8 to 10 percent of their income on health care. This would extend subsidies to families who don’t get federal subsidies or those who don’t get enough to cover their health costs.\nThis story has been updated." ]

[ "CLOSE A new poll reveals some good news for proponents of Obamacare. Veuer's Nick Cardona has that story. Buzz60\nSens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. (Photo: Mark Wilson, Getty Images)\nWASHINGTON – Sen. Lamar Alexander and other congressional Republicans are pressing forward with their latest plan to stabilize Obamacare health insurance markets and help provide coverage for patients with high medical costs.\nBut while previous versions have had bipartisan support, Democrats are refusing to back the latest bill.\nAlexander and three key Republicans filed legislation Monday that they said could provide coverage for an additional 3.2 million individuals and lower premiums by as much as 40 percent for people who don’t get their health insurance through the government or their employer.\nBeginning in 2019, the bill would reinstate for three years the government subsidies paid to insurers that provide health-care coverage to low-income clients. It also would provide $30 billion in funding – $10 billion a year over three years – to help states set up high-risk insurance pools to provide coverage for people with high medical costs.\nThe proposal also would revise the Obamacare waiver process so that states will have more flexibility to design and regulate insurance plans. In addition, it would require the Department of Health and Human Services to issue regulations allowing insurers to sell plans across state lines.\n“Our recommendations are based upon Senate and House proposals developed in several bipartisan hearings and roundtable discussions,” the proposal’s Republican sponsors said in a statement.\nMore: Trump proposes 12-month insurance plans that don't cover people, issues Obamacare requires\nThe bill is sponsored in the Senate by Alexander, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. The sponsors in the House are Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Ryan Costello, R-Penn.\nThe lawmakers are hoping to include the bill in a massive spending package that Congress is expected to take up by the end of the week. President Donald Trump told Alexander and Collins in a conference call over the weekend that he wants money to lower health insurance premiums included in the spending package.\nThe bill marks the latest attempt by lawmakers to offer short-term fixes that could bring some stability to the volatile health insurance markets created under the Affordable Care Act and help offset the higher insurance premiums expected to result from the repeal of the Obamacare requirement that most Americans buy insurance.\nAlexander and the Senate health committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, struck a deal last fall to extend the cost-sharing subsidies for two years. Trump has halted the payments, established under the Affordable Care Act, which are worth around $7 billion each year.\nBut Murray and other Democrats are refusing to sign onto the latest proposal because it includes language that they say would expand the restrictions on federal funding of abortions.\n“Senator Murray is disappointed that Republicans are rallying behind a new partisan bill that includes a last-minute, harmful restriction on abortion coverage for private insurance companies instead of working with Democrats to wrap up what have been bipartisan efforts to reduce health care costs,” said Murray’s spokeswoman, Helen Hare.\nMurray “hopes the unexpected release of this partisan legislation isn’t a signal from Republicans that they have once again ended ongoing negotiations aimed at lowering families’ health care costs in favor of partisan politics, and that they come back to the table to finally get this done,” Hare said.\nMore: Democratic National Committee official takes House lead on single-payer health care bill\nRepublicans, meanwhile, pointed to an analysis by health care experts at the management consulting firm Oliver Wyman that compared the new proposal to what people in the individual market will pay if Congress fails to act.\nThe analysis showed that the package would reduce premiums by up to 40 percent in the individual market for farmers, small business owners and others who don’t buy their insurance from the government or their employer.\nA self-employed plumber making $60,000, for example, may be paying $20,000 for health insurance now, but over time that insurance bill could be cut up to $8,000, the lawmakers said.\nPreliminary projections from the Congressional Budget Office indicated that the plan could be adopted without adding to the federal debt.\nRead or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2podvwj", "WASHINGTON — It may not equal Social Security and Medicare as a \"third rail\" program that politicians touch at their own risk, yet Medicaid seems to have gotten stronger after the Republican failure to pass health care legislation.\nReviled by conservatives, the 1960s Great Society program started out as health insurance for families on welfare and disabled people. But the link to welfare was broken long ago, and the federal-state program has grown to cover about 1 in 5 Americans, ranging from newborns to Alzheimer's patients in nursing homes, and even young adults trying to shake addiction. Although Medicaid still serves low-income people, middle-class workers are more likely to personally know someone who's covered.\nIncreased participation — and acceptance — means any new GOP attempt to address problems with the Affordable Care Act would be unlikely to achieve deep Medicaid cuts.\n\"This was an important moment to show that people do understand and appreciate what Medicaid does,\" said Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, a nonpartisan group that represents state officials. \"The more people understand what Medicaid is and what it does for them, the less interested they are in seeing it undermined.\"\nWith Republicans in control of the White House, both chambers of Congress, and 34 out of 50 governorships, it would have been hard to imagine a more politically advantageous alignment for a conservative overhaul of Medicaid.\nPresident Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid to cover more low-income adults, many of them working jobs without health insurance. Thirty-one states have accepted the ACA's expansion, covering about 11 million people.\nThe GOP bills would have phased out funding for Obama's expansion, and also placed a limit on future federal spending for the entire program — a step now seen as overreach. Spending caps in the House and Senate bills translated to deep cuts that divided Republicans.\nAnd GOP governors who had expanded the program couldn't swallow the idea of denying coverage to hundreds of thousands of constituents. Some went public with their opposition, while others quietly warned their congressional delegations about dire consequences.\nMedicaid \"is not yet at the Medicare and Social Security level because it isn't framed as something that you contribute to during your working years and you get it later as a commitment,\" said Diane Rowland of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. \"But I think there is a recognition that for all its flaws...it's really the nation's health care safety net.\"\nAn AP-NORC poll taken last month found the public overwhelmingly opposed to GOP Medicaid cuts, by 62-22.\n\"You just can't do this to people who are in situations that they didn't put themselves in,\" said Sara Hayden of Half Moon Bay, California. Unable to work as a data journalist due to complications of rheumatoid arthritis, she was able to get health insurance when her state expanded Medicaid.\nHayden estimates that one of the medications she takes would cost about $16,000 a month if she were uninsured. She pays nothing with Medi-Cal, as the Medicaid program is known in California.\n\"If they are going to repeal and replace, then I am dead in the water,\" she said.\nBrian Kline of Quakertown, Pennsylvania, works as a customer service representative, and got coverage after his state expanded Medicaid in 2015. Early last year he was diagnosed with colon cancer. After treatment that Medicaid paid for, his last CT scan was clear.\n\"You just wonder if the Republican bill had passed...what would have happened to me?\" said Kline. \"Would I have had access to my doctors and the tests to make sure my cancer didn't come back? I'm not sure what the answer to that question would have been.\"\nMany Republicans view Obama's Medicaid expansion as promoting wasteful spending, because the federal government pays no less than 90 per cent of the cost of care, a higher matching rate than Washington provides for the rest of the program.\n\"That is not a good recipe for encouraging states to implement better, lower-cost models of care,\" said Mark McClellan, who oversaw Medicare and Medicaid under former President George W. Bush.\nNonetheless, the debate showed Congress can't just elbow its way to a Medicaid overhaul.\n\"You are going to have to be gentle and thoughtful, working in a bipartisan way to see what ideas will reach across the aisle,\" said Republican economist Gail Wilensky, also a former Medicare and Medicaid administrator.\nThe push for Medicaid changes will now shift to the states. Some on the political right are seeking federal approval for work requirements and drug testing. From the left, activists in the 19 states that have not yet expanded their programs are contemplating revived campaigns.\nAn area that could find bipartisan support is health promotion, since Medicaid beneficiaries tend to have higher rates of smoking and other harmful lifestyle factors.\nKatherine Hempstead, who directs health insurance research for the nonpartisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation says Medicaid has come out a \"winner\" — for now.", "WASHINGTON — Medicaid, a 1960s Great Society pillar long reviled by conservatives, seems to have emerged even stronger after the Republican failure to pass health overhaul legislation.\nThe federal-state health insurance program for low-income Americans hasn't achieved the status of Social Security and Medicare, considered practically untouchable by politicians, like an electrified \"third rail.\" But it has grown to cover about 1 in 5 U.S. residents, ranging from newborns to Alzheimer's patients in nursing homes, and even young adults trying to shake addiction. Middle-class working people are now more likely to personally know someone who's covered.\nIncreased participation — and acceptance — means any new GOP attempt to address problems with the Affordable Care Act would be unlikely to achieve deep Medicaid cuts.\n\"This was an important moment to show that people do understand and appreciate what Medicaid does,\" said Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, a nonpartisan group that represents state officials. \"The more people understand what Medicaid is and what it does for them, the less interested they are in seeing it undermined.\"\nWith Republicans in control of the White House, both chambers of Congress, and 34 out of 50 governorships, it would have been hard to imagine a more politically advantageous alignment for a conservative overhaul of Medicaid.\nPresident Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid to cover more low-income adults, many of them working jobs without health insurance. Thirty-one states have accepted the ACA's expansion, covering about 11 million people.\nThe GOP bills would have phased out funding for the Obama expansion, but they also placed a limit on future federal spending for the entire program — a step now seen as overreach.\nThe per-beneficiary spending caps in the House and Senate bills translated to deep cuts that divided Republicans.\nAlso, GOP governors who had expanded the program couldn't swallow the idea of denying coverage to hundreds of thousands of constituents. Some Republican governors went public with their opposition, while others quietly warned their congressional delegations about dire consequences.\n\"I think there is a recognition among many that Medicaid is not just a welfare program but an underpinning of our social system,\" said Diane Rowland of the Kaiser Family Foundation.\nAn AP-NORC poll taken last month found the public overwhelmingly opposed to GOP Medicaid cuts, by 62-22.\n\"You just can't do this to people who are in situations that they didn't put themselves in,\" said Sara Hayden of Half Moon Bay, California. Unable to work as a data journalist due to complications of rheumatoid arthritis, she was able to get health insurance when her state expanded Medicaid.\nHayden estimates that one of the medications she takes for the disease would cost about $16,000 a month if she were uninsured. She pays nothing with Medi-Cal, as the Medicaid program is known in California.\n\"If they are going to repeal and replace, then I am dead in the water,\" she said.\nBrian Kline of Quakertown, Pennsylvania, works as a customer service representative, and got coverage after his state expanded Medicaid in 2015. Early last year he was diagnosed with colon cancer following a colonoscopy. After treatment that Medicaid paid for, his last CT scan was clear.\n\"You just wonder if the Republican bill had passed...what would have happened to me?\" said Kline. \"Would I have had access to my doctors and the tests to make sure my cancer didn't come back? I'm not sure what the answer to that question would have been.\"\nMany Republicans view Obama's Medicaid expansion as promoting wasteful spending, because the federal government pays no less than 90 percent of the cost of care, a higher matching rate than Washington provides for the rest of the program.\n\"That is not a good recipe for encouraging states to implement better, lower-cost models of care,\" said Mark McClellan, who oversaw Medicare and Medicaid under former President George W. Bush.\nNonetheless, the debate showed Congress can't just elbow its way to a Medicaid overhaul.\n'You are going to have to be gentle and thoughtful, working in a bipartisan way to see what ideas will reach across the aisle,\" said Republican economist Gail Wilensky, also a former Medicare and Medicaid administrator.\nThe push for Medicaid changes will now shift to the states. Some on the political right are seeking federal approval for work requirements and drug testing. But activists in the 19 states that have not yet expanded their programs are contemplating revived campaigns.\nAn area that could find bipartisan support is health promotion, since Medicaid beneficiaries tend to have higher rates of smoking and other harmful lifestyle factors.\nKatherine Hempstead, who directs health insurance research for the nonpartisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation says Medicaid has come out a \"winner\" in the debate.\n\"Medicaid has shown itself to be very much appreciated by a broader constituency than we might have originally thought,\" she said. \"And that is an important takeaway.\"", "Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, right, says Medicaid is among the big outstanding issues for the health care talks. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)\nBy Joe Williams and Kerry Young, CQ Roll Call\nSenate Republicans may provide higher federal funding to states with low Medicaid costs in their health care bill. The proposal under consideration gets to the heart of a key sticking point in the ongoing GOP discussions to overhaul the U.S. health care system: how to equitably treat states with drastically different Medicaid spending levels.\nMedicaid, the structure of tax credits and other issues are among the big disputes that Senate Republicans need to resolve, said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, on Wednesday. When asked if the Senate would vote by its self-imposed July Fourth goal, he demurred.\n“That would be a good goal. But I would say give us a little more time,” he said. “The end of July by the latest. If we can do it earlier, that’s good.”\nSenators have a lot of work remaining. “Nothing’s written yet,” Cornyn said.\nThe health law (PL 111-148, PL 111-152) created a Medicaid expansion that offered states enhanced federal funding for people who qualify under broader eligibility guidelines of up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line. Thirty-one states plus the District of Columbia opted into that expansion.\nNow Republicans are negotiating a way to provide equal funding to states with low Medicaid spending costs like Alabama and high-cost states like Alaska.\n“We’re trying to find a way to provide some recognition that some of the low-cost states should be recognized for their efficiency,” Sen. Michael Rounds, R-S.D., told CQ Roll Call. “If you have a larger base to begin with because of higher costs within your system and you build a multiplier in for additional costs in the future, those with a higher cost upfront now would have a higher multiplying factor.”\nThe House-passed bill (HR 1628) would restructure the finances of giant health program and switch it from an open-ended entitlement to a capped system. Lawmakers are seeking to resolve fights over the formula for those caps. The House bill would use a state’s Medicaid spending in 2016 as a baseline to determine how much that funding would increase year over year. Some senators are concerned, however, that such a system would effectively punish states for what they say is more effective management of Medicaid.\nOne option under consideration, according to several lawmakers, is to use a more robust growth rate to determine yearly increases in federal funding for the Medicaid program for just those states that used less of the government’s money in a given year. It could be modeled on ideas proposed earlier this year by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La.\nBut while Republican members like Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a state that choose not to expand its entitlement program, are pushing for a balance, the concept of increasing the flow of federal money overall has not been fully embraced by the party.\n“When you take a look at the money spent in Medicaid expansion, it’s a lot of money, and if we lock in that disparity that’s a disadvantage to states like Wisconsin. So yeah, I’m concerned about that,” he told CQ Roll Call. “I would rather not do it by spending more money.”\nJohnson called the divide over how to tackle the disparities between states a “significant one.”\nLawmakers who represent states with high Medicaid expenditures each year are pushing back against the notion that it can be attributed to bad management of the program.\n“We have to look at structural differences. Sometimes higher cost is not because the program is not well managed or well run. It’s because you might live in a big rural state with not a lot of health care providers,” Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said.\nDecisions Ahead\nThe lingering questions over what to do on the issue was a highlight at Tuesday’s GOP policy lunch, which included an appearance from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma.\nThe discussion went beyond just providing more federal money to states with low-Medicaid costs, however, and also touched upon how to encourage efficiency in the entitlement program, according to Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D.\n“We’ve got to create the right incentives . . . to encourage cost effectiveness and good outcomes,” he said.\nUnder the House bill, states would be given essentially a bulk amount of funding for specific categories based upon population, an approach referred to as per capita caps. States also could choose to get it in a lump sum block grant.\nHoeven is advocating for a proposal that would allow states to bank any unused federal allotment for future years.\n“I specifically asked what [Seema] thought about that concept . . . and she supported it,” he said.\nThe disagreement among the conference over such a critical aspect of the legislation, however, proves how much work Republicans have left on the bill. While leadership has begun discussions with the Congressional Budget Office over several proposals, there is currently no complete legislation and several members are still unsure exactly what proposals are under consideration.\nCassidy is pushing for $15 billion for the highest-risk participants in the individual market as a way to shore up the teetering state-based exchanges. At a meeting Wednesday with his Republican colleagues, Cassidy shared a document showing that since the health care law exchanges began in 2014, an influx of sicker individuals was the primary culprit in driving up premiums. Providing $15 billion for high-risk populations would pay off in the long run by helping bring down premiums for everybody else, Cassidy argued.\n“It is partially offset because you have lower subsidies,” he said “So $15 billion in market stabilization only costs you $5 billion because there is lower subsidies.”\nSen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said she has not seen any legislative text yet for her chamber’s bill. The lawmaker represents a Medicaid expansion state where the opioid epidemic has hit hard. She’s among the GOP lawmakers looking for a gradual end to the Medicaid expansion, which has helped many states get more people into treatment for narcotic addictions. Moderates want a seven-year phaseout.\n“I’d phrase it as a seven-year transitional period either to Medicaid or to coverage that’s as good as the Medicaid coverage that folks are on,” Capito said Wednesday. “I’ve said repeatedly I don’t want to drop anybody off, so I’m not phasing anybody out from anything.”\nThe process of drafting a bill appears to be taking longer than GOP leaders had estimated, with even some Republican senators confused about the current state of play. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said senators were told at the Wednesday lunch that the full bill has not yet been sent to the Congressional Budget Office.\n“That question was asked directly because we get a little concerned when we hear from people that it’s already gone to CBO,” Paul said.\nAlthough Republicans had hoped to vote on the measure by the Fourth of July recess, leadership has been careful to avoid setting any concrete deadlines.\n“Our goal here is to move forward quickly. The status quo is unsustainable. We all know something has to be done. Something has to be done soon,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said. “We’re working hard to get there.”\nAndrew Siddons and Sandhya Raman contributed to this article.", "A A\nOLYMPIA — Gov. Jay Inslee said Monday that a nonpartisan analysis of the Republican plan to replace the national health care law “confirms our worst fears.”\nMonday’s report by the Congressional Budget Office projects that 14 million people nationwide would lose coverage next year under the House bill dismantling former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Under the estimate, there would be 24 million more people uninsured by 2026 than under current law.\n“It would actually leave our nation worse off than before the ACA was implemented,” Inslee said in a written statement. Inslee said he would be contacting all of the state’s congressional delegation to ask them “to reject this attack on working families and vulnerable Americans.”\nPotential costs\nThe GOP legislation, which would eliminate the current mandate that nearly all people in the United States carry insurance or face fines, would use tax credits to help consumers buy health coverage and expand health savings accounts. It would also phase out an expansion of Medicaid and cap that program for the future, end some requirements for health plans under Obama’s law, and repeal several taxes.\nState officials have said that more than 600,000 lower-income people in Washington who gained coverage through Medicaid expansion could potentially lose coverage depending on what changes are made to the law at the federal level. If the state sought to backfill the Medicaid expansion numbers in order to keep those people covered, the state would face additional costs of $1.5 billion a year, according to Bob Crittenden, Gov. Jay Inslee’s senior policy adviser for health care. Additionally, Crittenden said, if the state were to return to paying for health programs that were replaced by the federal law, the state’s costs would increase by an additional $330 million every two years.\nIn a written statement, Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said the Republican plan is “a broken promise to every patient and family who listened when President Trump and Republicans said that their reckless, mean-spirited bill would somehow provide better coverage — for everyone — at lower cost.”\nPremiums cited\nHealth Secretary Tom Price says that the administration disagrees “strenuously” with the CBO’s findings, and Republican U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers said that the report’s score “doesn’t tell the whole story.”\n“CBO doesn’t take into account future actions Congress and the Administration will take to further lower costs and increase coverage options,” she said in a written statement. “Our plan will open up the insurance market so more people can find plans they want at prices they can afford, while addressing the disconnect between coverage and access to care.”\nMcMorris also noted that the report confirms that premiums will ultimately be lowered.\nThe budget office found that average premiums for individuals would rise in 2018 and 2019 by 15 percent to 20 percent compared to current law, because Republicans would eliminate the penalties designed to induce people to buy insurance coverage.\nBut beginning in 2020, premiums would begin to fall in comparison to current law, and by 2026 average premiums for people buying individual coverage would be roughly 10 percent lower than current law.", "A Louisville Metro Council member has agreed to issue an apology -- and will not seek re-election -- after allegations surfaced that he grabbed a colleague's rear end during a public event.\nA Louisville Metro Council member has agreed to issue an apology -- and will not seek re-election -- after allegations surfaced that he grabbed a colleague's rear end during a public event.\nThe restaurant at Bardstown Road between Goldsmith and Bashford Manor Lanes will host an overnight \"First 100\" party in the parking lot before the grand opening on June 21.\nThe restaurant at Bardstown Road between Goldsmith and Bashford Manor Lanes will host an overnight \"First 100\" party in the parking lot before the grand opening on June 21.\nNew Chick-fil-A in Louisville offering free meals for a year to first 100 customers\nNew Chick-fil-A in Louisville offering free meals for a year to first 100 customers\nThe last place Darius S. Reeves was seen in Pleasure Ridge Park.\nThe last place Darius S. Reeves was seen in Pleasure Ridge Park.\nPolice say an investigation shows that the child ingested the drugs at a home on Seminary Street in Carrollton.\nPolice say an investigation shows that the child ingested the drugs at a home on Seminary Street in Carrollton.\nIf you recognize the child, or know how to reach his parents or guardians, you are asked to call (812) 683-4111 or (812) 683-3003.\nIf you recognize the child, or know how to reach his parents or guardians, you are asked to call (812) 683-4111 or (812) 683-3003.\nFour Kentucky National Guard soldiers are facing felony charges after authorities say they gave a woman alcohol, then sexually assaulted her.\nFour Kentucky National Guard soldiers are facing felony charges after authorities say they gave a woman alcohol, then sexually assaulted her.\nShively Police say they've arrested two people who were illegally living in a tree house on someone else's property without their permission.\nShively Police say they've arrested two people who were illegally living in a tree house on someone else's property without their permission.\nAuthorities say she snatched the girl out of her own back yard -- and the reason she gave for doing so didn't add up.\nAuthorities say she snatched the girl out of her own back yard -- and the reason she gave for doing so didn't add up.\n(CNN) -- Fourteen million more Americans would be uninsured under the House Republican health care bill than under Obamacare in 2018, rising to 24 million by 2026, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said Monday.\nCBO's cost estimate for American Health Care Act (full text)\nThe long-anticipated score immediately puts the writers and supporters of the GOP Obamacare bill on the defensive. It is also certain to complicate the party's already troubled efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.\nThe CBO, along with the Joint Committee on Taxation, found that 5 million fewer people would be covered under Medicaid by 2018, and 14 million fewer people would enroll in the program by 2026. Meanwhile, 6 million fewer Americans would be covered in the individual market by 2018, but by 2026, only 2 million fewer people are expected to be covered. That's in part because fewer employers would offer insurance to their workers, driving more people to the individual market.\nIn total, an estimated 52 million people would be uninsured by 2026 under the GOP plan, compared to 28 million who would lack insurance under the current law.\nThe Republican bill, titled the American Health Care Act, would reduce the federal deficits by $337 billion over 10 years, the CBO said.\nThe legislation, introduced last Monday, has sparked deep concern among Republican lawmakers in both the House and the Senate. The sources of unease are wide-ranging.\nProminent conservatives on Capitol Hill, for example, have argued that the bill doesn't go far enough, labeling it \"Obamacare Lite.\" One element of the legislation that has drawn fierce scorn is the refundable tax credits, which conservative Republicans say amounts to an entitlement program.\nModerate Republicans are also uneasy, particularly when it comes to the proposal's impact on Medicaid expansion. Thirty-one states -- including 16 with Republican governors -- elected to expand Medicaid under Obamacare and have found it to be a successful way of insuring low-income adults at little cost to their states.\nThe House GOP bill proposes scrapping the enhanced federal funding for Medicaid expansion in 2020 and overhauls the entire program so that states receive a fixed amount of money per enrollee.\nIn the lead up to the CBO score, Republicans have preemptively downplayed its significance.\n\"The one thing I'm certain will happen is CBO will say, 'Well, gosh, not as many people will get coverage.' You know why? Because this isn't a government mandate,\" House Speaker Paul Ryan said on CBS over the weekend. \"So there's no way we can compete with, on paper, a government mandate with coverage.\"\nMore important than the CBO's prediction of how many people would be covered under the bill, Ryan added, is the goal of lowering the cost of care by expanding choice and competition.\nOne House GOP aide put it this way: \"They're saying people are losing coverage but in reality, these people are making a choice,\" the aide said. \"We're not ripping coverage away.\"\nWhite House spokesman Sean Spicer even went as far as to question the group's accuracy.\n\"If you're looking to the CBO for accuracy, you're looking in the wrong place,\" Spicer told reporters last week.\nRepublican backers of the bill are also stressing that the CBO score won't take into account the effects of other healthcare reforms that Republicans hope to enact, including through legislation and administrative actions from Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price.\nOne particular promise from Price could soon haunt Republicans.\n\"I firmly believe that nobody will be worse off financially in the process that we're going through,\" Price said on NBC's \"Meet the Press\" Sunday.\nDoug Elmendorf, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said on CNN on Monday that Price's claim was \"absurd.\"\n\"This legislation will cut subsidies substantially; millions of people will lose health insurance,\" Elmendorf said. \"But certainly people will be worse off.\"\nCopyright 2017 CNN. All rights reserved.", "Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said Wednesday it is time for Richmond lawmakers to “put the excuses aside” and pass a budget that expands health coverage to 400,000 low-income residents under Obamacare.\nThe Democratic leader is poised to break through an eight-year GOP blockade against expanding Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for the poor, as the state Senate takes up a two-year budget bill.\nTwo state Senate Republicans backed expansion after sweeping Democratic victories last fall, improving its prospects.\n“Hopefully they’ll vote in favor of this and we’ll get a budget and then we’ll go to the House,” Mr. Northam told WTOP radio.\nThe Old Dominion would be the 33rd state to expand the federal-state program for the poor to those making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.\n“These are Virginians that may have one, two or three jobs, but the cost of health care may have risen faster than their salaries,” the governor said.\nGOP allies failed to repeal and replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act last year, freeing states to expand its footprint. For instance, Maine voters opted to expand their own Medicaid program, though Republican Gov. Paul LePage says he will not implement it until the state share is fully paid for.\nUnder President Barack Obama’s signature program, the federal government is required to pay 94 percent of the cost of the expanded Medicaid population this year and 90 percent in 2020 and beyond.\nConservative opponents say expansion will bust states’ budgets, as they struggle to pay the increasing tab as the federal share shrinks.\nAmericans for Prosperity, a conservative pressure group, is set to rally with former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania ahead of the Richmond votes and call for renewed efforts to repeal Obamacare.\nYet Mr. Northam said his embrace of federal Obamacare funds is a no-brainer.\nThe windfall will help them battle the opioids crisis and compete with other states that are drawing down federal-taxpayer dollars that support health care sector, he told WTOP.\n“From a business perspective, it makes absolutely no sense [not to expand],” Mr. Northam said. “It’s time to put the excuses aside, whether you’re in favor of the Affordable Care Act or not.”\nThe governor hopes to implement Medicaid expansion by January 2019.\nIn a compromise, Virginia would request a waiver from the Trump administration that requires newly eligible residents to seek work as a condition of their benefits — a measure GOP lawmakers wanted, forcing Democrats to compromise.\n“We’ll do everything we can to help people get back into the workforce,” Mr. Northam said.\nCopyright © 2018 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.", "It may not equal Social Security and Medicare as a “third rail” program that politicians touch at their own risk, yet Medicaid seems to have gotten stronger after the Republican failure to pass health care legislation.\nReviled by conservatives, the 1960s Great Society program started out as health insurance for families on welfare and disabled people. But the link to welfare was broken long ago, and the federal-state program has grown to cover about 1 in 5 Americans, ranging from newborns to Alzheimer's patients in nursing homes, and even young adults trying to shake addiction. Although Medicaid still serves low-income people, middle-class workers are more likely to personally know someone who's covered.\nIncreased participation — and acceptance — means any new GOP attempt to address problems with the Affordable Care Act would be unlikely to achieve deep Medicaid cuts.\n“This was an important moment to show that people do understand and appreciate what Medicaid does,” said Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, a nonpartisan group that represents state officials. “The more people understand what Medicaid is and what it does for them, the less interested they are in seeing it undermined.”\nWith Republicans in control of the White House, both chambers of Congress, and 34 out of 50 governorships, it would have been hard to imagine a more politically advantageous alignment for a conservative overhaul of Medicaid.\nPresident Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid to cover more low-income adults, many of them working jobs without health insurance. Thirty-one states have accepted the ACA's expansion, covering about 11 million people.\nThe GOP bills would have phased out funding for Obama's expansion, and also placed a limit on future federal spending for the entire program — a step now seen as overreach. Spending caps in the House and Senate bills translated to deep cuts that divided Republicans.\nAnd GOP governors who had expanded the program couldn't swallow the idea of denying coverage to hundreds of thousands of constituents. Some went public with their opposition, while others quietly warned their congressional delegations about dire consequences.\nMedicaid “is not yet at the Medicare and Social Security level because it isn't framed as something that you contribute to during your working years and you get it later as a commitment,” said Diane Rowland of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. “But I think there is a recognition that for all its flaws ... it's really the nation's health care safety net.”\nAn AP-NORC poll taken last month found the public overwhelmingly opposed to GOP Medicaid cuts, by 62-22.\n“You just can't do this to people who are in situations that they didn't put themselves in,” said Sara Hayden of Half Moon Bay, California. Unable to work as a data journalist due to complications of rheumatoid arthritis, she was able to get health insurance when her state expanded Medicaid.\nHayden estimates that one of the medications she takes would cost about $16,000 a month if she were uninsured. She pays nothing with Medi-Cal, as the Medicaid program is known in California.\n“If they are going to repeal and replace, then I am dead in the water,” she said.\nBrian Kline of Quakertown, Pennsylvania, works as a customer service representative, and got coverage after his state expanded Medicaid in 2015. Early last year he was diagnosed with colon cancer. After treatment that Medicaid paid for, his last CT scan was clear.\n“You just wonder if the Republican bill had passed...what would have happened to me?” said Kline. “Would I have had access to my doctors and the tests to make sure my cancer didn't come back? I'm not sure what the answer to that question would have been.”\nMany Republicans view Obama's Medicaid expansion as promoting wasteful spending, because the federal government pays no less than 90 percent of the cost of care, a higher matching rate than Washington provides for the rest of the program.\n“That is not a good recipe for encouraging states to implement better, lower-cost models of care,” said Mark McClellan, who oversaw Medicare and Medicaid under former President George W. Bush.\nNonetheless, the debate showed Congress can't just elbow its way to a Medicaid overhaul.\n“You are going to have to be gentle and thoughtful, working in a bipartisan way to see what ideas will reach across the aisle,” said Republican economist Gail Wilensky, also a former Medicare and Medicaid administrator.\nThe push for Medicaid changes will now shift to the states. Some on the political right are seeking federal approval for work requirements and drug testing. From the left, activists in the 19 states that have not yet expanded their programs are contemplating revived campaigns.\nAn area that could find bipartisan support is health promotion, since Medicaid beneficiaries tend to have higher rates of smoking and other harmful lifestyle factors.\nKatherine Hempstead, who directs health insurance research for the nonpartisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation says Medicaid has come out a “winner” — for now.\n“I imagine these challenges to Medicaid will rise again,” she added. “But I think its supporters will also rise again.”", "WASHINGTON (AP) — Fourteen million Americans would lose coverage next year under House Republican legislation remaking the nation's health care system, and that number would balloon to 24 million by 2026, Congress' budget analysts projected Monday. Their report deals a stiff blow to a GOP drive already under fire from both parties and large segments of the medical industry.\nThe Congressional Budget Office report undercuts a central argument President Donald Trump and Republicans have cited for swiftly rolling back the 2010 health care overhaul: that the insurance markets created under that statute are \"a disaster\" and about to implode. The congressional experts said the market for individual policies \"would probably be stable in most areas under either current law or the (GOP) legislation.\"\nThe report also flies in the face of Trump's talk of \"insurance for everybody,\" which he stated in January. He has since embraced a less expansive goal — to \"increase access\" — advanced by House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republicans.\nHealth secretary Tom Price told reporters at the White House the report was \"simply wrong\" and he disagreed \"strenuously,\" saying it omitted the impact of additional GOP legislation and regulatory changes the Trump administration plans.\nIn a signal of trouble, Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., leader of a large group of House conservatives, said the report \"does little to alleviate\" concerns about the bill including tax credits considered too costly.\nThe budget office's estimates provide a detailed, credible appraisal of the Republican effort to unravel former President Barack Obama's 2010 overhaul. The office has a four-decade history of even-handedness and is currently headed by an appointee recommended by Price when he was a congressman. Trump has repeatedly attacked the agency's credibility, citing its significant underestimate of the number of people who would buy insurance on state and federal exchanges under \"Obamacare.\"\nOn the plus side for Republicans, the budget office said the GOP measure would reduce federal deficits by $337 billion over the coming decade. That's largely because it would cut the federal-state Medicaid program for low-income Americans and eliminate subsidies that Obama's law provides to millions of people who buy coverage.\nThe report also said that while the legislation would push premiums upward before 2020 by an average of 15 to 20 percent compared to current law, premiums would move lower after that. By 2026, average premiums for individuals would be 10 percent lower than under Obama's statute, it said.\nThe GOP bill would obliterate the tax penalties Obama's law imposes on people who don't buy coverage, and it would eliminate the federal subsidies reflecting people's income and premium costs for millions. It would instead provide tax credits based largely on recipients' ages, let insurers charge more for older people and boost premiums for those who let coverage lapse.\nIt would phase out Obama's expansion of Medicaid to 11 million additional low earners, cap federal spending for the entire program, repeal taxes the statute imposes and halt federal payments to Planned Parenthood for a year.\nAdministration officials took strong issue with the budget office's projections of lost coverage.\n\"We believe that our plan will cover more individuals and at a lower cost and give them the choices that they want,\" Price said.\nRyan, R-Wis., said the GOP legislation \"is not about forcing people to buy expensive, one-size-fits-all coverage. It is about giving people more choices and better access to a plan they want and can afford.\" In fact, he said on Fox News Channel that the CBO report \"exceeded my expectations.\"\nNot in a good way, Democrats said. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said the projections show \"just how empty the president's promises, that everyone will be covered and costs will go down, have been.\"\n\"I hope they would pull the bill. It's really the only decent thing to do,\" said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.\nThe American Medical Association, which has opposed the Republican bill because it would reduce coverage, said the report shows the legislation would cause \"unacceptable consequences.\"\nTwo House committees approved the legislation last week, and Ryan wants to bring it to the full House next week. Though many Republicans back the bill, conservatives say it doesn't go far enough in repealing Obama's law, while moderates whose states used the statute to expand Medicaid don't want people losing coverage.\nGOP leaders hope the Senate will consider the measure before breaking for an early April recess. Opposition from both ends of the Republican spectrum suggests senators might demand significant changes.\nThe budget office attributed projected increases in uninsured Americans to the GOP bill's elimination of tax penalties for people who don't buy insurance, reduced federal subsidies for many people who buy policies and the Medicaid reductions.\nBy 2026, the office estimated, a total of 52 million people would lack insurance, including 28 million expected to lack coverage under Obama's statute.\nThough Republican tax credits would be less generous than Obama's, the combination of those credits and other changes to lower premiums would attract enough healthy people to stabilize markets under the new plan, the report said.\nThe budget office sees federal spending on Medicaid declining by $880 billion over the coming decade — about 25 percent lower than current projections. That would push about 14 million low-income people off the program.\nAverage premiums are ultimately expected to fall, but that would vary for people of different ages because, contrary to Obama's law, Republicans would let older people be charged more.\nThe report estimates that individuals' out-of-pocket costs under the GOP bill \"would tend to be higher than those anticipated under current law.\" That runs counter to another claim from the president — that his health care plan would offer \"much lower deductibles.\"\nCBO had predicted 23 million people would enroll in online marketplaces under Obama's law but the actual number was 12 million, largely because it overestimated how the individual mandate would prompt them to buy coverage.", "CNN — Twenty-four million more Americans would be uninsured by 2026 under the House Republican health care bill than under Obamacare, including 14 million by next year, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said Monday.\nThe long-anticipated score immediately puts the writers and supporters of the GOP Obamacare repeal bill on the defensive. It is also certain to complicate the party's already troubled efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.\n- DOWNLOAD: Congressional Budget Office report on American Health Care Act (pdf)\nThe CBO, along with the Joint Committee on Taxation, found that 5 million fewer people would be covered under Medicaid by 2018, and 14 million fewer people would enroll in the program by 2026. Meanwhile, 6 million fewer Americans would be covered in the individual market by 2018, but by 2026, only 2 million fewer people are expected to be covered. That's in part because fewer employers would offer insurance to their workers, driving more people to the individual market.\nIn total, an estimated 52 million people would be uninsured by 2026 under the GOP plan, compared to 28 million who would lack insurance under the current law.\nThe Republican bill, titled the American Health Care Act, would reduce the federal deficit by $337 billion over 10 years, the CBO said.\nThe Trump administration immediately downplayed the report's findings.\n\"We disagree strenuously with the report that was put out,\" Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said Monday outside the White House.\nPrice argued the CBO ignored regulatory changes and grants to states the administration believes will lead to an expansion of health care coverage, although those plans have not been released.\nDemocrats immediately blasted the bill based off the report's findings.\n\"I think that throwing 24 million Americans off of health insurance, raising premiums for older low income Americans, while giving $285 billion in tax breaks to the top 2% is a disgusting and immoral proposal,\" Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, told reporters. \"Thousands of Americans will die if this legislation is passed and we have to do everything that we can to see that is defeated.\"\nThe legislation, introduced last Monday, has sparked deep concern among Republican lawmakers in both the House and the Senate. The sources of unease are wide-ranging.\nProminent conservatives on Capitol Hill, for example, have argued that the bill doesn't go far enough, labeling it \"Obamacare Lite.\" One element of the legislation that has drawn fierce scorn is the refundable tax credits, which conservative Republicans say amounts to an entitlement program.\nModerate Republicans are also uneasy, particularly when it comes to the proposal's impact on Medicaid expansion. Thirty-one states -- including 16 with Republican governors -- elected to expand Medicaid under Obamacare and have found it to be a successful way of insuring low-income adults at little cost to their states.\nThe House GOP bill proposes scrapping the enhanced federal funding for Medicaid expansion in 2020 and overhauls the entire program so that states receive a fixed amount of money per enrollee.\nPremiums will jump\nPremiums are expected to jump up to 20 percent in the individual market in 2018 and 2019, but after that, they would decrease. By 2026, average premiums would be roughly 10% lower than under the current system.\nBut the increase in premiums would be much steeper for some Americans in the individual market, particularly older people with lower incomes.\nA 64-year-old making $26,500 would pay $1,700 for coverage in 2026 under Obamacare, thanks to its subsidies. But under the Ryan plan, that persion would get hit with a annual premium bill of $14,600.\nHowever, those who earn too much to receive Obamacare subsidies would be better off under the GOP plan no matter their age. For 2017, the thresholds to qualify are $47,500 for individuals and $97,200 for families of four.\nSo a 21-year-old earning $68,200 in 2026 would pay $1,450 under the House bill, but $5,100 under Obamacare. A 64-year-old would face an annual premium of $14,600, compared to $15,300 under Obamacare.\nRepublicans downplaying the report\nIn the lead up to the CBO score, Republicans have preemptively downplayed its significance.\n\"The one thing I'm certain will happen is CBO will say, 'Well, gosh, not as many people will get coverage.' You know why? Because this isn't a government mandate,\" House Speaker Paul Ryan said on CBS over the weekend. \"So there's no way we can compete with, on paper, a government mandate with coverage.\"\nMore important than the CBO's prediction of how many people would be covered under the bill, Ryan added, is the goal of lowering the cost of care by expanding choice and competition.\nOne House GOP aide put it this way: \"They're saying people are losing coverage but in reality, these people are making a choice,\" the aide said. \"We're not ripping coverage away.\"\nWhite House spokesman Sean Spicer even went as far as to question the group's accuracy.\n\"If you're looking to the CBO for accuracy, you're looking in the wrong place,\" Spicer told reporters last week.\nRepublican backers of the bill are also stressing that the CBO score won't take into account the effects of other health care reforms that Republicans hope to enact, including through legislation and administrative actions from Price.\nOne particular promise from Price could soon haunt Republicans.\n\"I firmly believe that nobody will be worse off financially in the process that we're going through,\" Price said on NBC's \"Meet the Press\" Sunday.\nDoug Elmendorf, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said on CNN on Monday that Price's claim was \"absurd.\"\n\"This legislation will cut subsidies substantially; millions of people will lose health insurance,\" Elmendorf said. \"But certainly people will be worse off.\"\nThe-CNN-Wire™ & © 2017 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.", "SALT LAKE CITY — Medicaid spending per capita is lower in the Beehive State than anywhere else in the country, according to the findings of a Utah Foundation report published Wednesday.\nAs of 2016, $703 in combined state and federal Medicaid dollars were spent per capita in Utah, said the foundation, a nonpartisan policy research nonprofit. Per capita data was calculated by dividing costs by the number of total residents in the state.\nSam Brucker, a Utah Foundation research analyst who authored the report, said the low number is \"good news\" for the average Utah taxpayer.\n\"It's a lower tax burden overall for Utahns,\" Brucker said.\nState costs for Utah's Medicaid program also account for 18.7 percent of the state budget, eighth lowest in the United States, the report found. Nationwide, Utah also had the lowest percentage of its population enrolled in Medicaid as of 2016.\nThe average cost for each Medicaid enrollee in Utah was $5,326 in 2014, the most recent year for which that figure is available, the report says. That number was the 10th lowest in the United States.\nLow per-enrollee spending, which is \"a little more significant\" of a metric showing \"what the actual population in Medicaid costs,\" Brucker said, is due in part to children making up a relatively high proportion of those the program covers in Utah.\nIn 2017, recipients 18 years old or younger made up about 63 percent of Utah's Medicaid enrollees, but accounted for less than a third of the program's costs, the report says.\n\"They may need some ... preventive services and (other) services that don't cost quite as much and they don't need them quite as often,\" Brucker said.\nUtah's comparatively large families have also held sway on per capita income formulas the federal government uses to determine how much to pay for Medicaid services in the state.\nA high number of children have contributed to per capita income in the state ranking among the lowest in the country, leading to the federal government paying 70 percent of Medicaid costs in Utah, which the report says is \"the ninth highest reimbursement rate in the nation.\"\n\"We kind of make out well because of the way the federal funding is designed,\" Brucker said.\nThe state pays the remainder of Medicaid costs that are not reimbursed by the federal government.\nIn Utah, 10 percent of the population was enrolled in Medicaid in 2016, the report says. That coverage rate was lowest in the country, and 18 states and the District of Columbia had rates more than double that, according to data kept by health care policy think tank Kaiser Family Foundation.\nContributing to that low number, Utah is one of 18 states in the country that have opted not to expand Medicaid eligibility as provided for under the Affordable Care Act, Brucker said.\n\"So we're one of the 18 states still kind of in flux,\" she said. \"You have ... the community health workers advocacy agencies who are encouraged to get a broader population covered. Then you have this other side where there is this concern with spending.\"\nAfter years of failed efforts doomed by such budget concerns, state lawmakers passed a law this year seeking large-scale Medicaid expansion.\nThe law instructs state health officials to apply with the federal government to expand Medicaid eligibility to Utahns in households earning up to 100 percent of the federal poverty level, potentially giving coverage to up to 90,000 more Utahns.\nMedicaid advocates, arguing their measure is a better option, have created an initiative that would expand coverage up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level and make up to 150,000 more Utahns eligible. This week, the initiative was certified as having enough signatures to go before the state's voters in November.\n\"There is an ongoing tension between concerns about the growing cost of Medicaid and a desire to expand coverage to a broader population in Utah,\" said Utah Foundation President Peter Reichard in a statement Wednesday.\n\"As current and future Medicaid proposals unfold, coverage and its costs will demand close attention from the public and policymakers.\"\nNationally, Medicaid costs are expected to increase 5.8 annually on average through 2026, Utah Foundation's report says. Currently the program is paid for chiefly through unrestricted federal matching funds activated by state expenditures.\nOne significant reason for the projected cost increase for Medicaid, Brucker said, is \"because we're seeing increasing enrollment of older people in general and ... also individuals with disabilities, and those two populations do cost more.\"\nIn 2016, Utahns with disabilities were just 15 percent of all Medicaid enrollees in the state, but accounted for a little more than 47 percent of the program's costs, according to the new report. Utahns 65 years old or older are 3.9 percent of the states Medicaid recipients, but account for 7.3 percent of its costs.\nThose groups' prevalence among Utah Medicaid enrollees somewhat increased from 2016 to 2017, \"while at the same time child enrollees decreased by 1.9 percent and pregnant women, who are also on average a less expensive group, also decreased 5.1 percent,\" Brucker said.\nGeneral rises in prices for medical care and prescription drugs are also seen as \"primary factors driving Medicaid spending growth,\" the Utah Foundation said in a release.", "The American Health Care Act, the GOP’s answer to Obamacare, could end up costing the U.S. economy close to 1 million jobs, researchers predicted Wednesday.\nThe bill, if passed as written by the House of Representatives, would start out boosting jobs and increasing economic output because it would cut taxes, the team at George Washington and The Commonwealth Fund found.\nBut that would change fast, the experts forecast.\n“The AHCA would initially cause a brief spurt of economic growth from tax cuts, which primarily help those with high incomes,” said Leighton Ku, director of the Center for Health Policy Research at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at GW, who led the study team.\n“However, cuts in funding for Medicaid and health subsidies then begin to deepen, triggering sharp job losses and broad disruption of state economies in the following years,” Ku added.\n“Within a decade, almost a million fewer people would have jobs. The downturn would hit the health care sector and states that expanded Medicaid the hardest.”\nRelated: Here's What the AHCA Would Do\nHealth care has added an average 22,000 jobs a month so far in 2017, compared to an average monthly gain of 32,000 in 2016,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its May statement. That adds up to 329,000 jobs over the past year.\nChanges in total and health care employment due to the American Health Care Act, 2018 to 2026 George Washington University analysis\nThe more people who have health insurance, the more health care they seek.\nThe nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected last month that the AHCA would lead to 23 million people losing or opting out of health insurance by 2026 and would cut federal spending on health care by $1.1 trillion.\n“Our estimates are based on changes in federal funding gained or lost to states, consumers, and businesses,” Wednesday's report reads.\n“The AHCA significantly reduces federal funding for Medicaid. It lowers federal match funding for the 31 states and District of Columbia that expanded Medicaid, encouraging them to discontinue their expansions.”\nThe Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, part of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, has a much lower projection for how many people would lose or drop insurance. The CMS actuary calculates that 13 million fewer people would be covered in 2026 under the AHCA.\nRelated: Will Obamacare Repeal Cost Millions of Jobs?\nHealth care jobs are an enormous part of the U.S. economy — making for 18 percent of the total Gross Domestic Product or GDP. Hospitals, clinics, doctors and health care services are major sources of jobs, too.\nThe Senate is working on its own version of the AHCA and it would have to be reconciled with the House version. There’s been little information out of the Senate about what changes are planned for its version, which is being written entirely by the Republican majority.\nConservatives want to reduce federal spending to lower the deficit. Ku and colleagues note that will hit jobs on the state level.\n“Federal health funds are used to purchase health care. Then, fiscal effects ripple out through the rest of the economy, creating employment and other economic growth. This phenomenon is called the multiplier effect,” the report reads.\n“Health funds directly pay hospitals, doctors’ offices, and other providers; this is the direct effect of federal funding. These facilities use revenue to pay their employees and buy goods and services, such as rent or equipment; this is the indirect effect of the initial spending.”\nRelated: U.S. Health Spending Grew Especially Fast Last Year\nWhen people spend less money, jobs can be lost.\nThat would happen in 2018 in 17 states, the report predicted.\nBy 2026 the 10 biggest losers would be:\nNew York (86,000 jobs lost)\nPennsylvania (85,000)\nFlorida (83,000)\nMichigan (51,000)\nIllinois (46,000)\nNew Jersey (42,000)\nOhio (42,000)\nNorth Carolina (41,000)\nCalifornia (32,000)\nTennessee (28,000)\n“The Affordable Care Act enabled the U.S. to make substantial gains in health insurance coverage and led to nationwide improvements in health care access and affordability for millions of people,” said Commonwealth’s Sara Collins.\n“The deep coverage losses projected under the American Health Care Act would be damaging both to the health of Americans and the state economies in which they work.”\nThe same team at Commonwealth and GW made similar predictions in January.\nEither way, health care spending is likely to grow. CMS projected last February that health care spending will grow by an average of 5.6 percent a year over the next decade. The CMS report released Wednesday projects that health spending would account for 19.9 percent of GDP in 2026.", "Insurers, hospitals and health advocates are waiting for Gov. Jerry Brown to deal the drug lobby a rare defeat, by signing legislation that would force pharmaceutical companies to justify big price hikes on drugs in California.\n“If it gets signed by this governor, it’s going to send shock waves throughout the country,” said state Sen. Ed Hernandez, a Democrat from West Covina, the bill’s author and an optometrist. “A lot of other states have the same concerns we have, and you’re going to see other states try to emulate what we did.”\nThe bill would require drug companies to give California 60 days’ notice to state agencies and health insurers anytime they plan to raise the price of a drug by 16 percent or more over two years. They would also have to explain why the increases are necessary. In addition, health insurers would have to report what percentage of premium increases are caused by drug spending.\nDrugmakers spent $16.8 million on lobbying from January 2015 through the first half of this year to kill an array of drug legislation in California, according to data from the secretary of state’s office. For the pricing bill alone, the industry has hired 45 lobbyists or firms to fight it. Against the backdrop of this opposition campaign, Brown must decide by Oct. 15 whether to sign or veto the bill.\nThis story is part of a partnership that includes KQED NPR and Kaiser Health News. It can be republished for free. ( details\n“When they have to justify in California, de facto, they have to justify it to the other 49 states,” said Gerard Anderson, a health policy professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. “Other states essentially get to piggyback on the good efforts of California, and hopefully, because they might have difficulty justifying the price increases, everybody’s prices around the country will be lower.”\nOther states, including Maryland, Vermont, Nevada and New York, have passed similar laws aimed at bringing more transparency to prices and curbing price gouging. But the pharmaceutical industry has fought the hardest in California. If drug companies don’t like the disclosure laws in smaller states, they could decide not to sell their drugs there, Anderson said, but the market in California is just too big to ignore.\n“States like Maryland are just not as powerful,” he said. “It just doesn’t have the clout that a state like California has.”\n(Story continues below.)\nThis is the second go-round for such a drug price bill. Last summer, similar legislation crashed and burned. Its intended regulations were gutted so extensively that Hernandez decided to pull it. But, he said, two key things happened after that, setting the stage for a successful second attempt.\nFirst, in August 2016, less than a week after Hernandez pulled the bill, controversy erupted nationally over the price of EpiPens, which spiked nearly 500 percent. The increase sparked outrage from parents who carry the auto-injectors to save their children from life-threatening allergic reactions.\nMomentum grew among federal lawmakers last September. They called for hearings. Several bills were proposed across the country aimed to rein in drug prices.\nThen came the election of November 2016. After Donald Trump became president and Republicans took control of Congress, the No. 1 health policy priority became repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature legislation.\nAs federal lawmakers focused on dismantling the ACA, Hernandez said he saw another opportunity for state lawmakers to act on drug prices. He reintroduced his bill in early 2017, and this time political support grew quickly — beyond the usual suspects.\n“It wasn’t just labor,” he recalls. “It was consumer groups, it was health plans. It was the Chambers of Commerce, it was the hospital association.”\nThe Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, a drug industry’s trade group, argued that the bill known as SB 17 was full of “false promises” that wouldn’t help consumers pay for their medicines and would instead stifle innovation with cumbersome regulatory compliance.\n“That takes up a lot of resources and will take up a lot of time,” said Priscilla VanderVeer, deputy vice president of public affairs for PhRMA. “And that could mean pulling resources from research and development and having to put it into the reporting structure.”\nSome experts say that price transparency alone is not sufficient to bring down costs and that other changes are needed.\nHernandez is optimistic the governor will sign SB 17 into law. But he knows nothing’s certain. That’s because of what happened on Sept. 11, the day the bill came up for a key vote in the state Assembly — the same place it went down the year before. Hernandez thought he’d secured all the votes he needed, but at the last minute the votes started slipping away.\nThe bill needed 41 votes to pass the Assembly. During the roll call, the tally stalled around 35. Hernandez said he had plenty of colleagues willing to cast the 42nd vote, but with drug lobbyists swarming the Capitol, no legislators wanted to be the one to cast the deciding vote.\n“If the bill fails and you’re stuck out there, then you’re the person that’s attacking the industry,” Hernandez said.\nStill, the bill crossed the 41-vote threshold and the remaining lawmakers joined in. In the end, the bill passed with 66 votes. All the Democrats and half of the Republicans in the state Assembly voted for it.\nThis was much to the dismay of drug companies, which lobbied hard and issued a blitz of advertising in the last weeks before the vote.\nExperts said the drug industry doesn’t want a large influential state like California forcing them to share their data.\nDrugmakers are likely already devising ways to work around the California bill, warned Anderson, the Johns Hopkins professor. They’ve filed lawsuits to try to slow or stop laws from being implemented in other states, or to weaken the rules if and when they go into effect. Policy experts are watching to see what kinds of legal challenges the California law might be vulnerable to, and if it can withstand them.\n“We learn from the mistakes of other states,” Anderson said. “Legislation is an iterative process. We have 50 states and hopefully, by some time, we’ll get it right. We’re looking for California to take the lead on this.”\nThis story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, KQED and Kaiser Health News.", "The House will not include an Obamacare bailout package in their must-pass omnibus spending bill.\nMultiple lawmakers left a meeting with House Republican leadership on Monday night, confirming that the House version of the omnibus spending bill will not include an Obamacare bailout package proposed by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Susan Collins (R-ME).\nCongress must pass the omnibus spending bill before midnight Friday or the government will shut down.\nThe proposed bailout package would include Obamacare’s cost-sharing reduction subsidies for three years and funding a federal reinsurance program for three years in exchange for increased flexibility for states through federal waivers. The program would also expand eligibility for Obamacare “copper” plans.\nThe removal of the Obamacare bailout proposal deals a blow to Sen. Collins, who secured support from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to support the bailout measure in exchange for her vote for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December.\nHouse Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR), a supporter of the proposed bailout measure, said on Monday night, “They’re not in there at this point, and that’s unfortunate. We’re going to see what we can do moving forward, perhaps in the Senate.”\nSens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Ted Cruz (R-TX), as well House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) wrote an op-ed last week urging fellow lawmakers to end any potential Obamacare bailout.\nThe conservative lawmakers wrote in their op-ed why they oppose funding the CSR program, as well as a federal reinsurance program:\nBefore now, Republicans correctly saw CSR payments for what they were – flagrant bailouts of favored ObamaCare insurance companies – and refused to be complicit in that bailout. Republicans also recognized that CSR payments lacked sufficient pro-life protections, allowing taxpayer funding for abortions. These problems with CSR payments still remain – but the attitude among some Republicans has strangely and suddenly changed. The reinsurance program proposals under consideration today would create a new backdoor bailout similar to one originally found in Obamacare.\nIn contrast, Lee, Cruz, Meadows, and Jordan argue that Republican lawmakers should focus on expanding health savings accounts (HSAs), allowing Americans to purchase more affordable health plans, and making health plans portable between jobs.\n“These three simple things will go a long way toward promoting market competition that benefits consumers and reduces the cost of health care for everyday Americans,” the conservatives explained.", "The California Assembly's Select Committee on Health Care Delivery Systems and Universal Coverage will meet for a second hearing Monday, this time with a panel of experts from across the country.\nAssembly speaker Anthony Rendon convened the committee after shelving a Senate single payer proposal that he called “woefully incomplete.” It was expected to cost $400 billion annually in state funds.\nDemocratic assemblyman Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg) co-chairs the committee. He said they're looking for a solution that would cover all Californians, but not necessarily one that would eliminate all private plans, as most single payer models do.\nHe said hearing from other states will be vital to moving forward.\n“We hope to learn how they put their programs together and learn from their success, and then we’re going to look at the challenges around cost containment for medical care in general,\" Wood said. \"So, we’re moving far and wide to bring as many people to give us as much information as we can.”\nThe panel includes former Vermont governor Peter Shumlin. Shumlin got a single-payer plan through the legislature in 2011, but ultimately determined it would be too costly for the state.\nTypically states try to pay for single payer plans by waging individual and payroll taxes for a public health pool. The idea is that people will be paying taxes for comprehensive care, but they won't be paying premiums for individual plans.\nLinda Blumberg, a senior fellow in the Health Policy Center at a D.C.-based think tank called the Urban Institute, said that proposal doesn't typically fare well in the political arena.\n“A move to a single payer in one big step is probably going to be more challenging than states in the United States can really take on politically with success at this point,\" she said.\n\"There’s potential to move more in that direction by setting up a system that’s available to everybody where the financial assistance is more generous than what the Affordable Care Act is providing, but if people want to maintain their employer-sponsored insurance, they can do that.”\nWood says he doesn’t know what California’s next proposal will look like, but he knows it will have to be realistic about cost.\n\"How do we get the resources from the federal government to go it alone? And if we can’t get those resources, can we go it alone? The financing part of that is a challenge, and transition is a challenge.\"\nHow Other Single-Payer Plans Have Fared\nIn the last few years, single-payer models have popped up all over the country. Some plans have died at the governors’ desk, others on the Senate or Assembly floor. Many are still in progress, and some have just begun. Here’s a look at what a few other states have tried:\nVermont- Vermont’s Green Mountain Health Care system would have provided publicly financed coverage for all Vermont residents. A bill establishing the system was signed into law in 2011, bringing Vermont closer to a single-payer system than any other state. But former Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin shelved the plan in 2014, after financial analysis showed that paying for it would have required a payroll tax of 11.5 percent and an income tax as high as 9.5 percent.\nCalifornia- The single-payer plan proposed in SB562 this year would have cost roughly $400 billion dollars per year. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon shelved the bill, calling it “woefully incomplete,” but said he would continue to fight for health care for all Californians. In August, Rendon called for the launch of the Assembly Select Committee on Health Care Delivery Systems and Universal Coverage. The committee will hold its second hearing on Monday.\nNew York- The proposed New York Health Act - a law to establish a single payer system - passed in the assembly for the third time this May, but was later vetoed in the Senate. The plan would have been funded by a payroll assessment, similar to a Medicare tax.\nMassachusetts- The Massachusetts Senate passed a health care reform bill last month calling for further study of the cost of a single payer system. The bill includes a special amendment - if the annual cost-estimate turns out to be lower than the overall cost of the current market-based system, the state will then be directed to begin laying groundwork for a single-payer plan. The bill now moves to the House.\nColorado- ColoradoCare was defeated on a public referendum in November 2016. It would have eliminated most private health insurance and created a taxpayer-funded cooperative to provide healthcare for all residents.\nMaryland- A Maryland gubernatorial candidate called for a single-payer plan this week that would eliminate all premiums and out-of-pocket costs for state residents. He did not specify how the state would cover the cost of the plan.\nCopyright 2017 Capital Public Radio", "President Donald Trump promised to make health care more affordable but a government report finds that out-of-pocket costs — deductibles and copayments — would average 61 percent higher under the House Republican bill.\nAnd even though the sticker price for premiums would be lower than under the Obama-era law, what consumers actually pay would edge up on average because government financial assistance would be curtailed.\nThe report from the Office of the Actuary, a nonpartisan economic unit at the Health and Human Services Department, was released earlier this week with little fanfare.\n\"It's fascinating,\" said Chris Sloan, a policy expert with the Avalere Health consulting firm. \"They actually think that on average people will be paying more even though the underlying premium is less.\"\nThe estimates are for the year 2026, and apply to people who buy their own health insurance policies. That group was a major focus of former President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. Individually-purchased coverage is also key to the GOP's American Health Care Act, which would roll back much of \"Obamacare.\"\nThe report tracks with findings by the Congressional Budget Office, which said millions more would be uninsured under the Republican legislation, in particular due to Medicaid cuts affecting low-income people. But at first blush the impact appears to be less dramatic. The budget office estimate of 23 million more uninsured in 2026 compares with 13 million projected by the experts at HHS.\nHowever, Sloan said much of the contrast appears due to a fairly technical issue: the two groups of experts make different assumptions about the number of people covered as a result of Obama's law.\nThe HHS report also finds that the Republican bill would shorten the life of the Medicare hospital trust fund by two years, partly because it repeals a tax on upper-income earners.\nIn a statement, the Trump administration said the new HHS estimate doesn't take into account other changes proposed by the president, including relief from burdensome regulations and additional health care legislation.\nWhile Trump celebrated passage of the House bill with a Rose Garden ceremony, lately he's told senators it's too \"mean,\" and he's urged lawmakers to spend more money on health care. Republican senators are trying to find a compromise that will let them advance their own version.\nThe HHS experts projected forward nearly a decade, estimating that sticker-price premiums would average $801 a month in 2026 if the Obama law stays in place.\nUnder the GOP bill, that gross monthly premium would drop to $695, or about 13 percent less.\nYet financial assistance would also be reduced under House bill, which provides government tax credits based on age, not income. After taking that and other changes into account, net premiums would average $380 under the GOP bill, a little bit more than the $360 a month consumers would pay under current law.\nThe GOP bill also would eliminate current subsidies that help reduce deductibles and copayments for people of modest incomes. And it would allow insurers to offer plans that cover fewer benefits, among other changes. Both those shifts lead to higher deductibles and copayments.\nWhen all that is factored in, the HHS estimate found that cost-sharing would average $380 a month, 61 percent more than the estimate of $236 under current law.\nIn a Washington Post interview shortly before taking office, Trump promised \"much lower deductibles.\"\n\"You can see promise of the lower premiums holding up,\" said Sloan. \"But there is nothing in this proposal that is going to lead to lower deductibles or lower cost-sharing. There is just nothing there.\"\nThe HHS report cautioned that averages don't tell the whole story. The impacts would vary widely by age, income, and where a consumer lives. And the cost-sharing average includes people who use their insurance a lot, and people who don't go to the doctor.\n———\nHHS Office of the Actuary report: https://tinyurl.com/ycc9cmvt", "WASHINGTON, April 5 Prospects faded on Wednesday for quick Obamacare repeal and replacement legislation in the U.S. Congress as a renewed effort by the White House could not end infighting by Republican lawmakers over healthcare policy.\nOne outside conservative group said progress on a healthcare bill had \"stalled\" in talks between Republican conservatives and moderates, who had hoped to patch up differences this week.\nHeritage Action Chief Executive Mike Needham told reporters his group was even looking at ways to target House moderates known as the Tuesday Group, with attack ads in their districts and other tactics.\nRepublicans have been railing against President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act since its enactment in 2010. On Tuesday, some Republican lawmakers expressed hope the Trump White House would unveil a healthcare bill, and some conservatives said a vote by the full House was possible this week.\nThe legislation has not yet emerged, despite intensive talks with Republican lawmakers led by Vice President Mike Pence. A House Republican leadership aide said on Wednesday that plans remained on track for the divided chamber to begin a more than two-week recess by mid-afternoon on Thursday.\nRepresentative Mark Meadows, chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, late on Tuesday said, \"There’s a concern on my part that if we’re making real progress, that going home sends the wrong message.\"\nWithout a breakthrough by week's end, it will be the second time in about two weeks that the White House and House Republicans have fallen short on healthcare.\nStill, the negotiations will allow lawmakers to return to their home districts and tell voters they are trying to deliver on a campaign promise that helped them win election.\nIn an interview with Axios and NBC television, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Republicans will produce a healthcare bill, but did not provide a timetable.\nLate on Tuesday, following a long, closed-door meeting with House Republicans, Pence told reporters there was \"good talk, good progress\" toward a bill. He did not elaborate.\nRepublican lawmakers have described the current effort as focusing on maintaining Obamacare's list of essential health benefits, such as mental health coverage and maternity care. But states could apply for waivers if they demonstrated that would improve coverage and reduce costs.\nThere were discussions of a new provision to create a \"backstop\" so people with chronic illnesses in high-risk insurance pools do not see their premiums spike if major portions of Obamacare are repealed. (Reporting By Yasmeen Abutaleb and David Morgan, Writing By Richard Cowan; Editing by David Gregorio)", "May 3 After months of internal discord, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday were still trying to craft a bill to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, a law they have been attacking since it was enacted in 2010.\nTwo attempts in recent weeks to pass an overhaul bill have collapsed in confusion, with conservatives pushing for a more complete repeal and moderates keen to avoid going too far for fear of angering their constituents.\nObamacare brought health insurance coverage to millions of Americans. The first version of the Republican bill, known as the American Health Care Act, or AHCA, would have left 24 million more Americans without coverage, according to an estimate by nonpartisan congressional researchers.\nThe House has recently added two amendments to the AHCA to try to appease both conservatives and moderates. Here are the latest versions of the bill's main provisions:\nCOVERAGE\nThe Republican plan would maintain some of Obamacare's most popular provisions. It would allow young adults to stay on their parents' health plan until age 26 and it would ban insurers from setting a lifetime dollar limit on coverage.\nAn amendment introduced by moderate Republican Representative Tom MacArthur would let states opt out of Obamacare's mandate that insurers charge sick and healthy people the same rates. It would also allow states to opt out of Obamacare's requirement that insurers cover 10 essential health benefits, such as maternity care and mental health treatment.\nThe measure would provide states with $100 billion, largely to fund high-risk pools to provide insurance to the sickest patients. An amendment added Wednesday would provide another $8 billion over five years to help those with pre-existing conditions pay for health insurance.\nThe bill would let insurers mark up premiums by 30 percent for those who have a lapse in insurance coverage of about two months or more.\nInsurers won another provision they had long sought: The ability to charge older Americans up to five times more than young people. Under Obamacare, they could only charge up to three times more.\nTAX\nThe Republicans want to end in 2018 Obamacare's income-based tax credits that help low-income people buy insurance. These would be replaced with age-based tax credits ranging from $2,000 to $4,000 per year that would be capped at upper-income levels. While Obamacare's credits gave more help to those with lower incomes, the Republican plan would be largely age-based.\nThe Republican bill would abolish most Obamacare taxes, including on medical devices, health insurance premiums, indoor tanning salons, prescription medications and high-cost employer-provided insurance known as \"Cadillac\" plans.\nThose taxes paid for Obamacare. Republicans have not said how they would pay for the parts of the law they want to keep.\nThe bill would also repeal the Obamacare financial penalty for the 2016 tax year for not purchasing insurance, as well as a surtax on investment income earned by upper-income Americans.\nIt would repeal the mandate that larger employers must offer insurance to their employees.\nMEDICAID\nUnder Obamacare, more than 30 states, including about a dozen Republican states, expanded the Medicaid government health insurance program for the poor. About half of Obamacare enrollees obtained insurance through the expansion.\nThe bill would allow the Medicaid expansion to continue until January 1, 2020, providing states chose not to expand. After that date, expansion would end and Medicaid funding would be capped on a per-person basis.\nState Medicaid plans would no longer have to cover some Obamacare-mandated essential health benefits, fulfilling a Republican promise to return more control to the states. (Reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Leslie Adler)", "Sunday, December 10, 2017 at 9:42 pm |\n2 Questions Loom Over House-Senate Talks on GOP Tax Bill\nWASHINGTON (AP) – Two looming questions threaten to snag the seemingly smooth trajectory of the Republicans’ massive tax legislation now in its final leg in Congress. How to satisfy demands of the rebellious GOP lawmakers from high-tax states who demand concessions over a cherished deduction? And how to pay for those concessions? About two dozen House and Senate lawmakers begin formal talks next week to iron out differences between the two bills.\nUK, EU Hail Brexit Breakthrough Despite Unresolved Questions\nBRUSSELS (AP) – Britain and the European Union are hailing a breakthrough that allows them to begin talks on their post-Brexit relations without answering some key questions about how their divorce will play out. With pressure building on British Prime Minister Theresa May’s fragile government, the sides agreed Friday on the last sticking point in Britain’s divorce terms: the border between EU member Ireland and the United Kingdom’s Northern Ireland.\nBought a $450M Painting? In NY, Don’t Worry About the Tax\nNEW YORK (AP) – New York collects sales tax on even the smallest items, but it probably won’t collect a cent in taxes on a nearly half billion dollar painting by Leonardo da Vinci. That’s because the state’s laws are structured so that out-of-town buyers don’t get hit with big tax bills. One expert says if the city taxes them its status as a global center for art sales might be jeopardized.\nTrump Says Fines for Wells Fargo Will Not Be Dropped\nWASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump weighed in on an investigation into scandal-plagued Wells Fargo, tweeting Friday that fines and penalties against the bank would not be dropped, and may actually be “substantially increased.” Mr. Trump’s statement comes a day after a report that Mick Mulvaney, the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, was weighing whether the bank should have to pay tens of millions in fines already levied against it for mortgage lending abuses.\nJapan Economy Gains Momentum, Grows 2.5 Percent in July-Sept\nTOKYO (AP) – Japan’s economy is gaining momentum, expanding at a 2.5 percent annual pace in July-September. The figure reported Friday was revised upward from an earlier estimate of 1.4 percent growth due to higher business investment and rising inventories. In quarterly terms the world’s third-largest economy expanded at a 0.6 percent pace, twice the original estimate.\nDrug Companies Sue to Block California Drug Price Law\nSACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – Pharmaceutical companies on Friday sued to block a new California law that would require them to give advance notice before big price increases.\nThe law was approved this year in response to consumer outrage over a rise in drug spending and high costs for some prescription treatments, including new Hepatitis C medications and EpiPens to control allergic reactions.\nThe Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade group for drugmakers, said in its lawsuit that California’s law illegally tries to dictate national health policy. Because the law is tied to a national measure of drug prices, PhRMA argues that California’s advance notification requirement could restrict drugmakers’ ability to raise prices in other states.\nTyson Foods Increases Investment In Meatless Meat Company\nSPRINGDALE, Ark. (AP) – One of the world’s largest meat producers has raised its investment in a company that makes meatless meat.\nTyson Foods had previously had a 5 percent stake in the protein producer Beyond Meat, and said in a statement that it had made an additional investment.\nJustin Whitmore, Tyson’s chief sustainability officer, said global demand for all types of protein remains high and that the investment helps give consumers an alternative.\nBeyond Meat says a recent fundraising campaign will help it increase production and fund additional research. Tyson started a venture capital fund last year with the goal of helping “promising entrepreneurial food businesses.”", "— Concern about the future of St. Francis hospital in Topeka, as well as at least two other hospitals in the state, is prompting some lawmakers to say they'll try again to pass a Medicaid expansion bill when the Kansas Legislature comes back into session May 1.\n\"We are working hard to make sure there will be a continued or renewed debate about Medicaid expansion when we return for the veto session,\" said David Jordan, who heads the Alliance for a Healthy Kansas, a group that has been pushing for Medicaid expansion.\n\"I do think that legislators should be looking at the impact that the failure to expand Medicaid has on hospitals,\" Jordan said. \"They see that this is partially responsible for the potential closure of St. Francis as well as a few other hospitals.\"\nSt. Francis is a 378-bed nonprofit hospital that was established in 1909 by the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, an organization now known as SCL Health, based in Denver.\nIn May 2016, St. Francis and SCL announced they were putting the hospital up for sale. Since then, however, no sale has been announced, and on Friday Gov. Sam Brownback and Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt issued statements suggesting that closure of the hospital may be imminent.\nThe Topeka Capital-Journal has reported that an announcement is expected Tuesday. SCL Health did not confirm or deny that report on Monday.\n\"We have no announcement at this time, but will keep our dedicated associates and physicians, and the community they serve informed when we have definitive news to share,\" SCL Health spokesman Brian Newsome said in an email message Monday. \"In the meantime, we remain resolutely focused on providing the quality, compassionate care for which St. Francis has become recognized.\"\nIf St. Francis closes, it would be the second major hospital closure in Kansas in the last two years, following in the footsteps of Mercy Hospital in Independence, which closed in October 2015.\nAt that time, many people cited the state's refusal to expand Medicaid as one of the factors that led to the Independence hospital's closure. And officials at St. Francis cited it as well when they announced that the hospital was being put up for sale.\nIn addition, Mercy Hospital Fort Scott announced in March that it would begin to pare down its operations in reaction to what it called a changing health care environment. Although the hospital did not warn of an impending closure, officials said the reductions could include eliminating some services and reducing its staff.\nHospital president Reta Baker also cited the lack of Medicaid expansion as one of many factors affecting that hospital.\n\"In addition to the lack of Medicaid expansion, just a few of the other issues causing changes at Mercy Fort Scott include low volumes, outmigration, rising costs from outside sources to provide health care such as increased drug costs, and decreased reimbursement from all payer sources,\" Baker said.\n\"I don't see how you can divorce the two,\" said Sen. Laura Kelly, a Topeka Democrat whose district includes St. Francis. \"By not expanding Medicaid, we devalue every hospital in the state.\"\nExpanding Medicaid was one of the key elements of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, that were intended to provide health coverage to virtually all Americans. The law also mandated that large employers offer health plans to their full-time employees. And for people who could not access coverage through work, the law offered subsidized individual policies that are sold through online \"exchange\" markets.\nIn order to pay for those programs, however, the law also reduced payments to hospitals through Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly. Hospital lobby groups agreed to accept those reduced payments under the theory that they would no longer have to provide charity care to the uninsured because virtually every patient would have coverage.\nIn 2012, however, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a provision of the law that said states were required to expand their Medicaid programs, which are jointly funded by states and the federal government. Instead, the court said, Congress could only make Medicaid expansion an option.\nAs a result, hospitals in states like Kansas that have not expanded Medicaid are seeing the reduced payments from Medicare. But hospital officials say they are still providing large amounts of uncompensated \"charity\" care to the uninsured.\nIn Kansas, expanding Medicaid would extend coverage to an estimated 150,000 to 180,000 individuals who live in households with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $27,180 a year for a family of three.\nRepublican Gov. Sam Brownback, however, has been a harsh critic of the Affordable Care Act. And while he has not flatly refused to consider expansion, he has laid out conditions that some lawmakers consider unacceptable, such as including a work requirement for adults and eliminating the current waiting lists for nonmedical services for people who receive Medicaid-funded home- and community-based services.\nIn March, Kansas lawmakers passed a Medicaid expansion bill without those provisions and Brownback vetoed it the next day. An attempt to override the veto failed by three votes in the Kansas House on April 3.\nCopyright 2017 The Lawrence Journal-World. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. We strive to uphold our values for every story published.", "Viewpoints: GOP Health Plan — A Record In Unpopularity; Trump Rule Protects Nursing Homes, Not Patients\nA selection of opinions on health care from around the country.\nThe New York Times: G.O.P. Senators Might Not Realize It, But Not One State Supports The A.H.C.A.\nIt’s no secret that the American Health Care Act is unpopular. In recent national polls, only about 29 percent of Americans support the bill. It is the most unpopular piece of major legislation Congress has considered in decades — even more unloved than TARP (“the bailout”), and much more unpopular than the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Will Republican senators vote yes on a bill this unpopular? To hang on to their jobs, senators have to keep only voters in their own states happy, not the whole nation. (Christopher Warshaw and David Broockman, 6/14)\nLos Angeles Times: The Senate Is About To Ram Through Trumpcare. This Is Not A Drill; It's An Emergency\nLike a thief in the night, Senate Republicans are trying to take healthcare from tens of millions of people to pay for a massive tax cut. What we don’t know is exactly how many people will lose coverage or how much rich people will save in taxes — because Republicans are refusing to make their version of the American Health Care Act public. If you had any doubts that the bill would be a substantive and political disaster, this secretiveness should remove them. (Scott Lemieux, 6/13)\nLexington Herald Leader: Loss Of Health Care On McConnell\nSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans are bragging because health insurers are abandoning some individual markets, leaving consumers with no choices. It’s as if the Republicans have forgotten they’re in charge now. Aside from dodging responsibility for the disruptions in people’s lives, Republicans also are trying to dodge this reality: Their actions and inaction sabotaged the insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act. They caused the uncertainty cited by insurers such as Anthem Inc. when it announced that it would leave the Ohio market next year. (6/14)\nThe Washington Post: How The Republican Coward Caucus Is About To Sell Out Its Own Constituents — In Secret\nThe fate of the American health-care system now rests with a group of allegedly “moderate” senators, who are getting ready to approve a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a repeal bill so monumental in its cruelty that they feel they have no choice but to draft it in secret, not let the public know what it does, hold not a single hearing or committee markup, slip it in a brown paper package to the Congressional Budget Office, then push it through to a vote before the July 4th recess before the inevitable backlash gets too loud. (Paul Waldman, 6/13)\nThe Washington Post: The GOP Is Working Stealthily To Shred Health And Financial Protections For Ordinary Americans\nThe bars opened early in Washington and elsewhere last Thursday, as more than 19 million Americans tuned in when the networks and cable news channels carried live former FBI director James B. Comey’s riveting testimony in the intensifying scandals around President Trump. The media covers Trump’s derelictions 24/7. Not surprisingly, Democrats tend to talk about what grabs the most airtime. (Katrina vanden Heuvel, 6/13)\nLos Angeles Times: Trump Administration Uses Bogus Numbers On Obamacare — Again\nHealth and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was quick off the mark Monday after his agency released fresh data on “effectuated enrollments” — that is, Americans who not only chose an Affordable Care Act individual health plan for 2017, but secured coverage by paying their first monthly installment. The data, according to HHS, “show a decline in the number of Americans who have actually purchased coverage on the exchanges, with cost being a primary concern.” Price used that conclusion to assert in a statement, “Not surprisingly, as costs continue to go up, fewer Americans can afford to pay more and get less for healthcare.” (Michael Hiltzik, 6/13)\nLos Angeles Times: Government Actuaries Say You'll Pay A Whole Lot More For Health Insurance If The GOP Repeals Obamacare\nHere are some findings about Obamacare repeal that congressional Republicans and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price will have trouble explaining away: Under the GOP’s Affordable Care Act repeal bill, individuals will be paying an average 27% more for their insurance by 2026 than under current law. That’s $162 per month more, on average. (Michael Hiltzik, 6/13)\nRealClear Health: California And Texas Agree On Health Care\nProgressives and conservatives actually agree on health care: A crazy idea? Perhaps not. California, the West Coast bastion of progressivism, is pushing to create a single-payer health care system for its 39 million citizens. State Sens. Toni Atkins and Ricardo Lara have introduced Senate Bill 562 called the Healthy California Act, or HCA, which seeks to “establish a comprehensive universal single-payer health care coverage program and a health care cost control system for the benefit of all residents of the state.” After the California Senate passed the HCA on June 1, the state Assembly and Gov. Jerry Brown are the only barriers from realizing this progressive dream. (Deane Waldman and Vance Ginn, 6/14)\nThe Des Moines Register: Trump Protects Nursing Homes At Seniors' Expense\nIf the quality of nursing homes is determined by fines for violations, Iowa has some of the worst facilities in the country. Only five other states imposed more financial penalties on homes last year, according to federal data. As this editorial board recently reported, when industry representatives complained to the Department of Inspections and Appeals, state officials blamed the federal government for “insisting” on fines, even over recommendations of the agency. (6/13)\nThe Wall Street Journal: A Regulation That Protects Big-Hospital Monopolies\nIn Cartersville, Ga., two highly regarded obstetricians, Hugo Ribot and Malcolm Barfield, hoped to add a second room to their one-room surgery center. But the plan hit a snag. They needed to obtain a “certificate of need” from Georgia’s Department of Community Health. Three large hospitals in the area—which provide similar services at far higher cost—blocked their application. Dr. Ribot and Dr. Barfield are now suing the state for restraint of trade. (Hal Scherz, 6/13)\nThe Washington Post: Is Trump Making America Mentally Ill?\nIn one of Walker Percy’s brilliant novels, “The Second Coming,” protagonist Will Barrett keeps falling down for no apparent reason. He also suffers trances during which he contemplates existential questions. Barrett comes to mind in the era of Donald Trump. (Kathleen Parker, 6/13)\nRealClear Health: Analysis: Peering Into The Nation’s Opioid Crisis Through A Regional Lens\nThe opioid crisis is national in scale, but it varies greatly at the regional level. Drawing on our national database of 23 billion private health care claims, we recently explored the regional variation in the opioid crisis during the ten-year period 2007-2016 in a new white paper. Preceded by reports on national trends in opioid-related diagnoses and on the epidemic’s impact on the health care system, this report is important because it suggests the need for policy flexibility in dealing with the varying regional manifestations of the opioid crisis. (Robin Gelburd, 6/14)\nWBUR: Making The Poor Work: A Solution In Search Of A Problem\nSome cities are experimenting with paying panhandlers to clean public spaces. But for national policy, a less bureaucratic strategy for fighting poverty — giving the poor direct cash, enough for a living income — notched stunning gains in Brazil. Testing that approach with America’s needy would be much better use of our national time and treasure. (Rich Barlow, 6/14)\nThis is part of the KHN Morning Briefing, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription", "Virginia lawmakers crossed an important hurdle Wednesday, ensuring that, despite years of resistance, the state will become the latest to expand access to Medicaid.\nScroll for more content...\nThe move to broaden the federal health care program for low-income Americans comes as a direct result of the political fallout from last November's election.\nDemocrats came within one seat of drawing even in the state's House of Delegates in last fall's election. It was a stunning turn of events after decades of rule by Republicans. The GOP stranglehold on the House was the primary barrier to adopting the Medicaid expansion provision of the Affordable Care Act. Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, spent all four years in office attempting to expand the program, to no avail.\nIn the 2018 legislative session, the first with the new House of Delegates, Republicans quickly worked with Democrats to negotiate a budget deal that included expansion. However, the leadership of the GOP-controlled state Senate (which was not up for re-election in 2017) remained resistant to the concept and used a variety of legislative tactics to stall the budget process.\nUltimately, a small cadre of pro-expansion Republicans teamed up with Senate Democrats to bring budget amendments directly to the floor that included expansion and had enough support to pass. The bill passed 22-18, with the support of three Republicans.\nThe final budget bill will still need to pass the House in its current form and be signed into law by pro-expansion Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, but that is expected without complications.\nVirginia's Medicaid expansion would be Democrats' first major policy victory to come as a result of the party's strength in elections that have taken place since Trump took office.\nDemocrats have largely been playing defense, using victories in congressional and state legislative special elections to make passing legislation a little tougher for Republicans. But in Virginia, Democrats have gone on offense.\n\"Today's vote in Virginia is a smack in the face to the Trump administration and the Republicans in Congress who keep pushing an out-of-touch, anti-health-care agenda,\" said Leslie Dach, chair of the advocacy group Protect Our Care, which supports the Affordable Care Act. \"While they keep voting for health care repeal and sabotaging the system, Virginia voters demanded -- and won -- expanded coverage.\"\nMedicaid expansion in Virginia, however, will come with strings. The deal calls for the state to apply for a federal waiver to allow it to implement work requirements, copayments and other measures. It also would place new taxes on certain private hospitals to cover state costs.\nWork requirements and other policies could cause tens of thousands of residents to lose access to Medicaid coverage, according to the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.\nThe Trump administration took the historic step earlier this year of allowing states to require certain Medicaid recipients to work for their benefits. More than a dozen states have expressed interest, and the administration has already approved four states' waiver applications. Many of these states are targeting the expansion population -- often able-bodied, working age adults without dependent children -- in their work-requirement waivers.\nCNN Money: Trump administration allows states to make Medicaid recipients work\nThe move to expand Medicaid means Virginia will receive an additional $2 billion a year in federal funding. The federal government picks up at least 90% of the tab in states that have expanded, though opponents worry that Washington could one day pull back on its support.\nProponents, on the other hand, have noted that Virginia has already missed out on more than $10 billion since the provision first went into effect in 2014.\nExpansion is expected to add about 400,000 Virginians to the Medicaid rolls, according to state data. The uninsured rate would fall to 10.9% in 2019, down from 14.9%, an Urban Institute analysis found.\nVirginia has among the most stringent eligibility rules in the country. Childless, non-disabled adults can't sign up currently, while parents can qualify only if their income is below $6,900 for a family of three.\nMonthly enrollment averaged 1 million people, including 732,000 low-income families and children, in fiscal year 2017.\nVirginia will join 31 other states and the District of Columbia in providing health insurance to its residents who earn up to 138% of the poverty level, or roughly $16,800 for an individual or $28,700 for a family of three this year.\nMomentum is building in other states, as well. Voters in Maine approved a ballot initiative to expand Medicaid last year, though Republican Gov. Paul LePage has refused to implement it. Health care activists are suing the state in hopes of moving the process forward. At least 70,000 residents would gain coverage.\nAdvocates in Utah have collected enough signatures to put Medicaid expansion on the ballot this fall. Meanwhile, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert and state lawmakers are waiting for federal approval for a partial expansion, which would add adults making up to 100% of the poverty line, or about $12,100 per person.\nIdaho activists are also gathering signatures to allow residents to vote on Medicaid expansion in November.", "The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration's request to hear its appeal of a California judge's ruling keeping the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in place for now.\nThe high court's decision is raising questions about what it means for DACA's future and how it affects the roughly 700,000 young unauthorized immigrants who still have temporary work permits and deportation protection through the program. Here are some answers:\nQ: What does the Supreme Court's decision mean?\nLast month, a federal district judge in San Francisco temporarily blocked President Trump's decision to end the DACA program on March 5. The Trump administration then asked the high court for an expedited review of that lower court ruling.\nIn this decision, the Supreme Court said no. The high court very rarely grants such requests. The administration will need to follow the normal appeals court route and take its arguments to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. If the administration is unhappy with the appellate court's decision, it can then appeal to the Supreme Court again.\nUntil that happens, the district court ruling remains in place and DACA recipients can continue to renew their work permits and deportation protections, although no new program applications will be accepted.\nLower courts in California and New York have not ruled on the merits of DACA but rather on whether the Trump administration acted legally in the way it rescinded the program.\nQ: Does the Supreme Court's decision mean that DACA keeps going past March 5?\nYes, for now. There have been two recent temporary court injunctions, including the one issued in California, that direct the government to continue taking DACA renewal applications.\nWhen President Trump rescinded DACA in early September, DACA recipients whose status was set to expire before March 5 were given a one-month window to renew their status for a final time. Those whose DACA permits were set to expire after March 5 were not allowed to renew them.\nAs a result of the lower-court injunctions, any DACA recipient who is eligible to renew for another two years may do so. Immigration officials are required to process their applications.\nQ: How long will DACA remain in place now?\nThat's unclear.\nThe federal appeals courts in California and New York, where the two lower court decisions were made, could ultimately rule in favor of the Trump administration. If so, the window for DACA renewals could then close. If they rule against the administration, the window could remain open longer as the cases move to the Supreme Court, as they are expected to do.\nThe Trump administration could seek other ways to end DACA. Several lawsuits, including the California case on which the lower court ruled, alleged that the administration's decision to rescind DACA violated the Administrative Procedures Act. The government could conceivably fix any alleged violations.\nQ: Does the decision have any bearing on the immigration debate in Congress?\nWhen President Trump rescinded DACA, he asked Congress to come up with a legislative solution to the young immigrants' fate by the March 5 deadline.\nSince then, Trump has demanded several concessions in exchange for his support for a legislative solution, including money for a border wall and changes that would dramatically reduce the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country.\nLawmakers have attempted to come up with a compromise to let young unauthorized immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children stay legally, but none of the bills introduced have garnered enough support. Earlier this month, a series of measures were voted on in the Senate and failed to pass.\nThe high court's decision does buy more time for a legislative answer, at least while the court injunctions stand. Immigrant advocates are continuing to push Congress for a long-term path to legal status for DACA recipients.", "Signups for Obamacare in states that had later deadlines for open enrollment appear to be outpacing previous years, despite consumer confusion about the law and federal cutbacks to advertising and outreach.\nAs of Jan. 29, nearly 11.8 million people had enrolled in Obamacare coverage in the federal and state exchanges, according to data collected by the pro-Obamacare group Get America Covered. The numbers appear to be headed toward outrunning the end of the previous open enrollment during President Barack Obama's last year in office, when 12.2 million had signed up.\nThe estimates come as every state, other than the District of Columbia, has closed its open enrollment period. The Trump administration's healthcare.gov deadline ended Dec. 15, six weeks earlier than under the Obama administration.\nBut the 11 states and D.C. that created their own exchanges could set their own deadlines. Nine had deadlines that were later than healthcare.gov's, excluding Maryland, whose officials later decided to provide a five-day extension. California and New York ended open enrollment this week.\nState governments that were more supportive of Obamacare had later deadlines and spent more on getting the word out.\nCalifornia spent $110 million on advertising and outreach, saying it was necessary because of consumer confusion about the law. The amount dwarfs the $10 million that the federal government spent on advertising, down from $100 million spent during the previous year. The Trump administration also reduced spending on navigators, who help people sign up for plans, from $62 million to $36 million.\n\"Getting press coverage to complement our advertising is actually what has made us so effective,\" said Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California. Research that the agency commissioned showed that people were more likely to go to the state website or encourage people they know to sign up for coverage when they read about it in the media.\nData from Jan. 21 indicated that 342,000 new California consumers had signed up for health insurance,​ and 1.2 million had stayed on. New customers are showing higher volumes than last year​, when ​these ​sign-ups hadn't passed 320,000 until Jan. 23.\nRepublicans failed in 2017 to repeal most of Obamacare, formally called the Affordable Care Act, but did repeal the law's penalty against people who were uninsured in the tax overhaul legislation. The penalty will be lifted beginning in 2019, but state officials say the back and forth on Capitol Hill caused confusion among customers.\nThe efforts in Congress and from the Trump administration led to Democratic charges of \"sabotage,\" but the changes the Trump administration made did not appear to significantly affect enrollment. At the close of the federal exchange's deadline, about 8.7 million people signed up for coverage, a slight decrease from the 9.2 million the year before. Much of that was thanks to a system that automatically enrolled previous customers in the same plan they had or in a similar plan if their insurer stopped participating in Obamacare.\nThe Trump administration said it had used resources more efficiently and effectively, focusing on strategies such as emailing people directly about the deadline. Seema Verma, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, also credited her agency's work in launching a website that didn't face the technical challenges that plagued earlier years.\nBut officials at the local and state levels said they observed confusion, and surveys parallel their experiences. One poll from YouGov suggested a third of the public believes Obamacare has been repealed, and another poll indicated that the public was confused about the status of the Obamacare fine. An eHealth survey found more than half of consumers didn't know when the Obamacare deadline was.\nThe District of Columbia extended its deadline for DC Health Link to Feb. 5 from Jan. 31.\n\"We know anecdotally that there has been real confusion about whether the marketplace was open for enrollment after Dec. 15,\" said Linda Wharton-Boyd, spokeswoman for DC Health Link. \"We also know from a recent national survey that up to a third of Americans believe the ACA was already repealed. We want to cover as many people as we can and that’s why we did this extension.\"\nAs of Jan. 8, the latest day for which data are available, 93,335 people had signed up for coverage. The totals are in line with the previous open enrollment and include the SHOP exchange, which covers small businesses and members of Congress and their staffs.\nIn New York, more than 1.36 million people signed up for coverage, an increase from 1.1 million the year before. State officials held more than 470 events to promote open enrollment and released a range of ads, as it had in previous years.\n\"Since the start of the 2018 open enrollment period, N.Y. State of Health worked to get its message out and counter consumer confusion about coverage and enrollment deadlines,\" said Jill Montag, spokeswoman for the state's health department.\nCost also may have had an impact on enrollment. A larger proportion of states were able to offer their customers lower-cost health insurance than the previous year. The Trump administration ended payments to insurers known as cost-sharing reduction subsidies, and as a result, some states raised premiums only on certain types of plans, shifting costs to the federal government. That curbed premiums for customers who otherwise would have faced higher costs and allowed other customers to obtain coverage without any cost to them.\nRate increases varied widely by state but increased by an average of 34 percent nationwide for mid-level plans that weren't subsidized. The increase was felt most by healthier, older enrollees who are middle-class.\nLee noted that people who were unsubsidized at a certain income level might be hardest to bring along. The group also tended to be healthier, he noted, which would continue to raise the cost of premiums in future years as they exit plans.\n\"There is a small slice that is absolutely not going to buy no matter what you do, but there are a lot of people for whom marketing gets them across the finish line,\" Lee said. \"They need to be sold and cajoled.\"\nWhile most states matched or outpaced enrollment, the numbers did fall from the previous year in Idaho and Maryland.\nStates are considering various responses for 2019, whether by buckling down on Obamacare by imposing their own mandates for coverage or asking the federal government to allow changes to the law.\nCalifornia plans to continue to try to make Obamacare successful there.\n\"We will make it work for consumers with whatever cards we are dealt,\" Lee said.", "The final rule issued last week by the Trump administration aimed at improving the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) health insurance marketplaces should help to prevent more insurers from leaving and may also help consumers, experts say.\n\"In total, while the regulatory changes may limit consumer protections, they are meant to encourage better plan participation, which is key to having insurance options for people to purchase,\" Caroline Pearson, senior vice president of health policy and strategy at Avalere, a healthcare consulting firm in Washington, said in an email. \"The biggest impact on consumers may be changes to shorten the open enrollment period and make it harder to qualify for special enrollment periods, both of which may reduce the number of people who sign up for exchange coverage.\"\nThe rules issued last Thursday will:\nShorten the annual open enrollment period for 2018 to put it more in line with Medicare and the private market. Under the rule, the next open enrollment period will start on November 1 and run through December 15.\nRequire individuals to submit supporting documentation for special enrollment periods and ensuring that only those who are eligible are able to enroll. This rule \"will encourage individuals to stay enrolled in coverage all year, reducing gaps in coverage and resulting in fewer individual mandate penalties and help to lower premiums,\" CMS said.\nAllow insurers to require enrollees to pay back past due premiums before enrolling into a plan with the same insurer the following year. \"This is intended to address gaming and encourage individuals to maintain continuous coverage throughout the year, which will have a positive impact on the risk pool,\" according to the agency.\nDrop the ACA's requirement for insurers to only issue policies with an \"actuarial value\" of at least 60% -- that is, the lowest-level (bronze) plan on the exchange must pay 60% of enrollees' costs, while enrollees pay the other 40% through a combination of deductibles, copays, and coinsurance. Dropping this requirement \"[gives] issuers additional ... flexibility to develop more choices with lower premium options for consumers, and to continue offering existing plans,\" CMS said.\nDefer to states' review of health plans' \"network adequacy\" -- that is, whether each plan offered on the exchanges has a network of providers sufficient to meet the needs of its enrollees without requiring them to travel too far. Instead of enforcing federal network adequacy standards, the rule \"returns oversight of network adequacy to states, [which] are best positioned to evaluate [it],\" the agency noted.\n\"These rules don't directly help consumers. They help insurers by better protecting the integrity of the health insurance markets,\" Robert Laszewski, president of Health Policy & Strategy Associates, a healthcare consulting firm in Alexandria, Va., said in an email. \"The Obama administration did the insurance exchanges a disservice by being so loose with the rules. The result was a lot of unsubstantiated enrollments and too many opportunities for consumers to take advantage of the system ... Consumers are helped here because if the integrity of the market is protected, premiums can be lower.\"\nThe new rules are mostly just fixes to stem abuses of the current individual insurance marketplaces, said Thomas Miller, JD, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, in an email. \"On the margin, they help reduce the premiums of everyone else in the individual market who is not gaming the system, as well as improve the premium-to-claims-costs ratio for participating insurers. The other adjustments ( stretching the limits of minimum actuarial value coverage parameters for lower metal tiers, and shortening the annual enrollment open season period) are less likely to have significant effects.\"\n\"An unstable individual market in which insurers continue to exit or raise their premiums higher isn't good for either insured customers, the uninsured, taxpayers, or insurers,\" he added. \"But administrative means alone can't fix larger structural problems without new legislation.\"\nThe part of the rule that pares down the open enrollment period \"certainly makes sense,\" said Gail Wilensky, PhD, senior fellow at Project Hope in Bethesda, Md. \"Whether 6 weeks is the exact right amount\" is hard to say, but \"at some point, these very long enrollment periods are hard to justify.\"\nThe idea of allowing states to be more flexible in the actuarial value of insurance policies they allow is a little bit trickier, she continued. \"They are trying to find ways that balance improving stability and [avoid] frustrating people [who find] that what they've bought doesn't provide them with any coverage. There are tradeoffs.\"\nBeing a tough regulator and not allowing any variation on actuarial value seems to be working well for the state of California, \"But that isn't what many other states are inclined to do, or they may not be attracting the kind of insurers who would want to put up with the kind of control that California has launched,\" she said. \"Insurers may tolerate more control [in California] because of the size of the market they have access to.\"\nThe new rule does show the limits of what can be done administratively to improve the ACA, Miller pointed out. \"The more significant decisions ahead will involve the redefinition of individual mandate enforcement and whether or how to finance the cost-sharing reduction subsidies.\"\nMiller was referring to the cost-sharing subsidies that the federal government issues under the ACA to help insurers lower costs for low-income enrollees on the exchanges. President Trump has threatened to drop the subsidies unless congressional Democrats strike a deal with congressional Republicans and the White House to repeal and replace the ACA.\n2017-04-17T17:45:00-0400" ]

[ "Erica Jong" ]

[ "novel electronic instruments", "Who's That Girl" ]

[ "Equality of zonal areas on a sphere and pseudosphere is extended by elementary geometric methods to surfaces of revolution of constant total (Gaussian) curvature, and constant mean (Delaunay) curvature. Bicycle wheels are used to trace profiles of these surfaces. Surprisingly, cycloids appear as limiting cases of such profiles." ]

[ "It is shown that a four-dimensional Kahler metric is pointwise Osserman if and only if it is either of constant holomorphic sectional curvature or a Ricci flat complex surface. Examples of Kahler Osserman metrics with nilpotent Jacobi operators of all possible degrees are given.", "This letter presents an analytical model to predict the behavior of a circumferentially impedance modulated cylindrical metasurface leaky-wave antenna. The variation in the radiation characteristics of the leaky-wave antenna with respect to its curvature is addressed. A lossy transmission line, whose loss is associated with the curvature of the metasurface, is utilized to determine the surface impedance of the metallic strips placed on a dielectric covered ground plane. This modifies the propagation constant of the surface wave propagating along the circumferential interface. As the surface wave is the source of radiation from the metasurface, any variation in the propagation constant of the surface wave changes the radiation characteristics of the leaky-wave structure.", "We present an algebraic procedure that finds the Lie algebra of the local Killing fields of a smooth metric. In particular, we determine the number of independent local Killing fields about a given point on the manifold. Spaces of constant curvature and locally symmetric spaces are also discussed. Furthermore, we obtain a complete classification of the Lie algebra of local Killing fields for surfaces in terms of conditions upon the Gauss curvature.", "It is shown that in a class of maximal globally hyperbolic spacetimes admitting two local Killing vectors, the past (defined with respect to an appropriate time orientation) of any compact constant mean curvature hypersurface can be covered by a foliation of compact constant mean curvature hypersurfaces. Moreover, the mean curvature of the leaves of this foliation takes on arbitrarily negative values and so the initial singularity in these spacetimes is a crushing singularity. The simplest examples occur when the spatial topology is that of a torus, with the standard global Killing vectors, but more exotic topologies are also covered. In the course of the proof it is shown that in this class of spacetimes a kind of positive mass theorem holds. The symmetry singles out a compact surface passing through any given point of spacetime and the Hawking mass of any such surface is non-negative. If the Hawking mass of any one of these surfaces is zero then the entire spacetime is flat.", "A surface in hyperbolic space H 3 invariant by a group of parabolic isometries is called a parabolic surface. In this paper we investigate parabolic surfaces of H 3 that satisfy a linear Weingarten relation of the form a�1 +b�2 = c or aH +bK = c, where a,b,c ∈ R and, as usual, �i are the principal curvatures, H is the mean curvature and K is de Gaussian curvature. We classify all parabolic linear Weingarten surfaces in hyperbolic space.", "Using renormalization group methods, we calculate the derivative expansion of the effective Lagrangian for a covariantly constant gauge field in curved spacetime. Curvature affects the vacuum; in particular it could induce phase transitions between different vacua. We also consider the effect of quantum fluctuations of the metric, in the context of a renormalizable R2 theory. In this case the critical curvature depends on the gravitational coupling constants.", "Abstract We derive equations for the spontaneous curvature and rigidity constant for a two-dimensional liquid-vapor interface. These equations are analogous to expressions given in a previous paper on the three-dimensional liquid-vapor interface. Using an approximation for the pair density of a circular interface we give expressions for these quantities in terms of integral over the derivative of the interaction potential and the pair correlation function in the bulk liquid region. Close to the critical point, the same relation between the rigidity constant and the surface tension is found as in the three-dimensional system. The description of the interface using a position dependent pressure tensor is analyzed.", "Abstract We present algorithms for computing the differential geometry properties of intersection curves of two surfaces where the combination of two surfaces can be parametric–parametric, implicit–implicit and parametric–implicit. We derive unit tangent vector, curvature vector, binormal vector, curvature, torsion, and algorithms to evaluate the higher-order derivatives for transversal as well as tangential intersections for all three types of intersection problems.", "Two super-integrable and super-separable classical systems which can be con- sidered as deformations of the harmonic oscillator and the Smorodinsky-Winternitz in two dimensions are studied and identified with motions in spaces of constant curvature, the deformation parameter being related with the curvature. In this sense these systems are to be considered as a harmonic oscillator and a Smorodinsky-Winternitz system in such bi-dimensional spaces of constant curvature. The quantization of the first system will be carried out and it is shown that it is super-solvable in the sense that the Schrodinger equa- tion reduces, in three different coordinate systems, to two separate equations involving only one degree of freedom.", "We review recent results concerning finite size corrections to the Ising model free energy on lattices with non-trivial topology and curvature. From conformal field theory considerations two distinct universal terms are expected, a logarithmic term determined by the system curvature and a scale invariant term determined by the system shape and topology. Both terms have been observed numerically, using the Kasteleyn Pfaffian method, for lattices with topologies ranging from the sphere to that of a genus two surface. The constant term is shown to be expressible in terms of Riemann theta functions while the logarithmic correction reproduces the theoretical prediction by Cardy and Peschel for singular metrics.", "The most frequently observed focal conic domains (FCD's) in lamellar phases are those based on confocal paris of ellipse and hyperbola. Experimentally, the eccentricity of the ellipse takes a broad range of values $0l~el1.$ We present an analytical expression for the curvature energy of a FCD that is valid in the entire range $0l~el1.$ Generally, the curvature energy of an isolated FCD reaches a minimum only at $\\stackrel{\\ensuremath{\\rightarrow}}{e}1$ (under the constraint of a fixed major semiaxis of the ellipse); exceptions include situations with large saddle-splay elastic constant and small domains where the applicability of the elastic theory is limited. In realistic cases, a value of eccentricity smaller than 1 is stabilized by factors other than the curvature energy: by dislocations emerging from the FCD's with $e\\ensuremath{\\ne}0,$ compression of layers and surface anchoring.", "A new regularization formulation for inverse problems in computer vision and image processing is introduced, which allows one to reconstruct second order piece-wise smooth images, that is, images consisting of an assembly of regions with almost constant value, almost constant slope, or almost constant curvature. This formulation is based on the idea of using potential functions that correspond to springs or thin plates with an adaptive rest condition. Efficient algorithms for computing the solution and examples illustrating the performance of this scheme, compared with other known regularization schemes, are presented as well.", "A necessary and sufficient condition for the existence and uniqueness of a conformal metric on 2-sphere of constant curvature 1 and with three conical singularities of prescribed order is given.", "The effect of curvature on the extinction at the tip of laminar spray diffusion flames in coflow is analyzed. In particular, we look at the way spray-related parameters alter the tip curvature and what impact this influence has on flame-tip extinction. The spray is described using the sectional approach and is assumed to be quasi-monodisperse. The analysis reveals that the flame curvature is strongly changed by the droplet loading and the vaporization Damkohler parameter. It is found that the tip curvature decreases rather sharply for a certain range of values of the vaporization Damkohler number. The extent of the decrease increases with the initial droplet load. Under these circumstances flame extinction is inhibited. However, beyond this range flame extinction can actually be enhanced because of the presence of the droplets. This behavior, with its linkage to the flame-tip radius of curvature, is related to the manner in which the spray parameters dictate the shape and temperature of these spray flames.", "We develop a new approach to finding corners in images that combines foveated edge detection and curvature calculation with saccadic placement of foveal fixations. Each saccade moves the fovea to a location of high curvature combined with high edge gradient. Edges are located using a foveated Canny edge detector with spatial constant that increases with eccentricity. Next, we calculate a measure of local corner strength , based on a product of curvature and gradient. An inhibition factor based on previous visits to a region of the image prevents the system from repeatedly returning to the same locale. A long saccade is move thes fovea to previously unexplored areas of the image. Subsequent short saccades improve the accuracy of the location of the corner approximated by the long saccade. The system is tested on two natural scenes and the results compared against subjects observing the same test images through an eyetracker. Results show that the algorithm is a good locator of corners.", "Effect of Convex Surface Curvature on the Onset of Nucleate Boiling of Subcooled Fluid Flow in Vertical Concentric Annuli An experimental study has been carried out to investigate the effect of the transverse convex surface curvature of core tubes on heat transfer in concentric annular tubes. Water is used as the working fluid. Three annuli having a different radius of the inner cores, Ri", "This paper established the general mathematical model of variable radius variable lead helix, which applies the theory method for variable lead transmission. It also studeid the geometrical characteristics of variable lead helix in cylindrical surface, and the curvature and torsion is expressed by function , which is good to the research of transition curve. The corollary is put forward and explained that the geometric curvature of the helix on the cylindrical surface is equal to the geometric curvature of plane line which is obtained by expanding the cylindrical surface along axial direction, that transition curve design can be carried out in the plane. In the design of transition curve, circular arc and polynomial curve were chosen to connect two known curves respectively, and then according to the extreme conditions the transition curve functional is built up. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.mech.19.3.4664", "For certain compact complex Fano manifolds $M$ with reductive Lie algebras of holomorphic vector fields, we determine the analytic subvariety of the second cohomology group of $M$ consisting of K\\\"ahler classes whose Bando-Calabi-Futaki character vanishes. Then a K\\\"ahler class contains a K\\\"ahler metric of constant scalar curvature if and only if the K\\\"ahler class is contained in the analytic subvariety. On examination of the analytic subvariety, it is shown that $M$ admits infinitely many nonhomothetic K\\\"ahler classes containing K\\\"ahler metrics of constant scalar curvature but does not admit any K\\\"ahler-Einstein metric.", "The propagation of type N gravitational radiation in homogeneous cosmological models with space-sections of constant negative curvature is considered. It is found that the propagation of radiation distorts the isotropy of the fluid pressure in the models permanently.", "The author illustrates the geometry and the kinematics of two articulated systems built up of a set of rigid, rectilinear elements, pin-jointed together. In the first case, we have a kinematic grid which, from its initial closed shape, expands along two directions on an open (or closed) cylindrical surface. In the second case, the kinematic grid expands on a double curvature surface like, for instance, a paraboloid. The characteristics of the two surfaces requires, for a single or double curvature, two different solutions. They have been patented by the National Research Council.", "The curvature effect of the 3-D layout may result in a severe deterioration of the breakdown voltage in a power lateral double-diffused MOS (LDMOS). In this paper, a novel 3-D analytical model is proposed to provide the physical insight of curvature effect in small radius region by solving the 3-D Poisson in cylindrical coordinates. The proposed model indicates that the curvature effect equivalently changes the drift region doping concentration, thus altering the surface electric field profile. The proposed 3-D model can accurately describe the surface field profile in the fingertip regions of the multifinger layout, and provides an effective way to reveal the influence of curvature effect on the performance of silicon-on-insulator LDMOS. Furthermore, based on the proposed model, a corresponding structure optimization criterion is derived to provide a simple but effective method for the device structure parameters optimization.", "Prescribing σ k curvature equations are fully nonlinear generalizations of the prescribing Gaussian or scalar curvature equations. For a given a positive function K to be prescribed on the 4-dimensional round sphere, we obtain asymptotic profile analysis for potentially blowing up solutions to the σ 2 curvature equation with the given K; and rule out the possibility of blowing up solutions when K satisfies a non-degeneracy condition. Under the same non-degeneracy condition on K, we also prove uniform a priori estimates for solutions to a family of σ 2 curvature equations deforming K to a positive constant; and under an additional, natural degree condition on a finite dimensional map associated with K, we prove the existence of a solution to the σ 2 curvature equation with the given K using a degree argument involving fully nonlinear elliptic operators to the above deformation.", "Let D be a bounded convex domain in with a Hermitian metric of constant negative holomorphic sectional curvature such that all components blow up to infinity on the boundary of D. Then D is biholomorphic to the Euclidean ball.", "As a new aerodynamic design method, the time marching through-flow has overcame the difficulty countered by the streamline curvature method. Meanwhile this new method has been proven having more advantages than the traditional streamline curvature methods during the design process for fans. The validity and advantage of this new method can be seen from this paper.", "Riemann’s paper ‘On the hypotheses that lie at the foundations of geometry’ is one of the fundamental papers in the creation of modern geometry. We analyse its content, look at the influence the work of Gauss and Herbart exercised on Riemann, and discuss other of Riemann’s papers that shed light on his ideas, in particular on his appreciation of the concept of curvature.", "Instruments intended for use with the human eye almost always suffer from field curvature, because nearly all the components in them are of positive power. This paper will look at some standard eyepiece designs, and also one of the designs undertaken by Ancient and Modern Optics, comparing the calculated dioptre variation across the field with the subjective impressions of the user. Finally a design methodology for visual systems will be proposed which takes into account the asphericity, as well as the curvature, of the field presented to the eye, and the ability of the eye preferentially to select the best of the two astigmatic fields presented to it.", "The pseudo-Euclidian momentum space is replaced in the theory by momentum space of constant curvature. The diagram technique of Feynman is generalized in the corresponding manner. Finite results are obtained in the lowest order perturbation theory approximation for the fermion and boson self- energy. (auth)", "Adsorption and absorption were analyzed for nonpolar and polar solutes to a water droplet of nanometer size and to a planar slab. All-atom molecular dynamics simulation was performed, and the free energy change for bringing the solute to the water aggregate was computed over a wide range of temperature. It was seen in both the droplet and slab systems that the solute is preferably located at the surface, and the propensity of the nonpolar solute at the surface relative to the bulk was found to be larger in the droplet than in the slab. A molecular-sized curvature thus enhances the surface propensity of a nonpolar solute, whereas the curvature effect is weaker for polar one. The attractive and repulsive interactions of the solute with water were further analyzed, and the role of the repulsive interaction is discussed with respect to the stability of the surface-bound state.", "An analysis is presented for wave propagation over a smooth cylindrical surface of constant curvature when the boundary impedance is specified. High-frequency approximations are introduced which permit a universal plot of the diffraction loss as a function of a hill-height parameter. The results are extended to allow for the presence of a knife-edge obstacle located on the crest of the rounded hill. For the conditions considered, the latter produces a substantial gain which, to some extent, overcomes the diffraction loss associated with the hill. The results have direct application to HF and VHF radio propagation over heavily vegetated and forested terrain.", "The maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) provides a robust solution in matched‐field imaging (MFI), which has evolved from various underwater acoustic applications successfully. In the identification of the principal curvatures during the medical or robotic applications of acoustic tactile sensing, matched field processing offers a reasonable detection of the reflected wavefront. Two major difficulties, however, are there in the principal curvature identification. The first reason is that the wavefront reflected by the elliptic paraboloidal or the hyperbolic paraboloidal surface cannot be described in the combination of the plane waves nor the spherical waves strictly. The second is that the principal curvature identification process becomes ill posed due to the nonlinear relationship between the principal curvatures and propagation time of flight. The MFI scenario, therefore, can solve the nonlinear optimization problem in order to identify the curvature. In this paper, the proposed identification algorit...", "In super space (x,theta), as the metric tensor field G/sup A/B (x,theta) is given, we calculate the Riemann curvature tensor R/sup D//sub A/BC of the fourth rank and its generalized cyclicity. The equation that must be satisfied by isometry in the super space, i.e., super Killing equation: xi/sub A/;B+eta/sub a/bxi/sub B/;A = 0, is deduced. In flat super space with zero curvature tensor, we have obtained the general solutions of the super Killing equation and the commutation relations of the corresponding generators. In the case of constant curvature, we have obtained a special solution of the super Killing equation.", "The existence of weakly localized surface and pseudosurface waves on the corrugated surface of a medium of arbitrary symmetry is studied. The localized solution originates from an exceptional bulk wave associated with a transonic state of positive or negative curvature. It is shown that the period of corrugation or the frequency of the wave can universally be chosen such that the solution will exist. The range of permissible periods (frequencies) is different for positive and negative curvature transonic states, it being wider near transonic states of positive curvature. The imaginary component of the pseudosurface wave velocity is found to vary as the height of grooves to period of corrugation ratio raised in fourth or sixth power, depending on the transonic state with which the exceptional wave is associated. A simple analytical expression is derived allowing estimations to be made of the penetration depth and the velocity of the localized wave." ]

[ "Who has been more violent in history, Christianity or Islam?" ]

[ "Is Islam violent or are there just bad people in Islam?", "Lets not forget Muslims islams and Christians all believe in same God?", "What religion is the most violent?", "Do exorcisms happen in religions other than Christianity?", "Islam: Is nationalism un-Islamic?", "Is Islam really a religion of peace? If so, why do so many Muslims act in extremely violent manner saying it's in the name of their religion?", "Why are Muslims so obsessed with Islam, Quran, Prophet Muhammed (much more than other people are with their own religion)?", "Is Christianity a religion?", "Is Islam a religion of peace?", "Why Islam is a threat?", "Islam: According to islam, are all non-Muslims going to hell?", "Why is hoodtriotic.com such a violent site?", "What made Islam spread around the world faster than any other religion?", "Is the journey more important than the destination?", "What is the difference between Muslim and Christian?", "Is Dumbledore more powerful than Voldemort?", "Are there more questions than there are answers?", "Will IRNSS be more accurate than GPS?", "What is political Islam?", "Is Quora more interesting than Facebook?", "Why is Islam such a \"peaceful\" religion?", "Why do Muslims have more children when compared to other religions?", "What is more destructive than a nuclear bomb?", "Are Macs more secure than Windows?", "Different between Muslim and Christian? Different", "Is there anything in the world that is more pleasurable than sex?", "Are all religion other than Islam happy with uniform civil code in India?", "Is love just an attraction, or is it more than that?", "Why are guys more introverted than girls?", "Are Islam and terrorism so deeply intermeshed that it is impossible to separate the two?", "Why was Jesus sent by god in Islam?", "Is Romanian more similar to Latin than Italian?" ]

[ "Passover begins Saturday at sundown, and thousands of African-American Jews will be among those marking the holiday. A look at how one black Jewish family in New York prepared for the week." ]

[ "Jewish families celebrating Passover may be sipping on a seasonal offering from Coca-Cola: Kosher For Passover Coke. It's made especially for observant Jews who don't eat grain or legumes during the holiday.", "They're hexagonal-shaped crackers that have a lot more flavor than matzoh (chalk it up to the additional sugar and oil) and they've been on -- or near -- my family's Passover table for as long as I can remember. And stocked in my parents' pantry throughout the year. Matzah is a must on Passover, but there's no religious obligation to eat a Tam Tam. Representatives from the company that makes them, Manischewitz, didn't get back to me on the origin of the name, but I suspect it may have something to do with the Hebrew/Yiddish word \"ta'am,\" meaning \"taste\" and by extension, \"tasty.\" This year, Tam Tams are short supply, and as part of research for our segment on the crisis, I did some calling around. One store deep in Brooklyn said they had the whole-wheat version in stock (I've tried those in the past and decided they weren't worth the trip). Then a guy at an Upper West Side kosher grocery said he had several flavors, so I ran up there to buy out his stock. It was too good to be true. Kosher-for-Passover crackers? Yes. But not Tam Tam brand. Not the familiar, yellowish hexagons. I went to a nearby D'Agostino's grocery store. There was a whole endcap of Passover-compliant goods. Minus the Tams Tams. The typical saying at the end of the Passover meal is \"Next year in Jerusalem.\" Now, there's something else to look forward to in the year to come.", "Passover begins Monday at sundown. The Jewish holiday commemorates the mass exodus of Jews from Egypt. For eight days, observant Jews will eat matzo, a symbolic dry, flat cracker, that some say tastes like cardboard. And that taste is what has fueled the entrepreneurial spirit of an Atlanta man and his family.", "On Wednesday, Jews will mark the first night of Passover with the traditional seder — a dinner retelling of the story of the Jews&#8217; exodus from slavery in Egypt. And later this week, Christians will observe Good Friday and Easter. But how to do it when community gathering — at the very heart of the celebrations — is not permitted? And can our more solitary observances still be meaningful? Yes, according to Rabbi Noam Marans and Pastor Jared Wellman (@JaredcWellman), who join host Robin Young to talk about this year&#8217;s unique challenges. This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "Sunday night, millions of Jews around the country kicked off the weeklong holiday of Passover. It may be the best known Jewish holiday, but how much do we really know about Passover? Michel Martin will speak to Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of the National Synagogue in Washington, D.C., about Passover and its importance.", "2: Pulitzer Prize winning playwright DAVID MAMET (MAM-ette) has written a new book, Passover. (St. Martin's Hood) It details a conversation between a grandmother and granddaughter preparing a traditional Passover meal. Through their conversation the grandmother reveals the horrific family history of living through the Polish Pogroms. MAMET also wrote Glengary Glen Ross (for which he won the Pulitzer Prize), Writing in Restaurants, and he wrote the screenplays for The Untouchables and Hoffa.", "At Passover, Jews all over the world sit down for a Seder meal, enacting an ancient ritual. But this year, many of them will be guided through it by a very modern text — a crowd-sourced haggadah. Designer Eileen Levinson launched a website inviting anybody who wants to contribute selections for the Passover service. It now boasts over 2,000 contributions — from children's activities to songs to interpretations of the exodus story through the lens of social justice or interfaith relationships — which people can click through to create a personally meaningful document. Deena Prichep reports on how modern technology is being used to create a varied, living document, and how this contemporary practice is very much in the age-old Passover tradition.", "It's the weekend of Easter and Passover. Steve Greenberg and Rick McKee celebrate the holidays.", "In one sense, St. Patrick's Day is a failure. The holiday as we know it in America was promoted by activists to celebrate Irish culture, in order to fight prejudice against Irish immigrants. Today, many of us celebrate by going out drinking and acting out the very stereotypes the day was created to combat. On the other hand, 150 years ago nativists in the U.S. were burning Irish Catholic churches to the ground. Today on St. Patrick's Day, Americans of all backgrounds wear green, drink Guinness, and put on pins that say \"Kiss me I'm Irish.\" There's something beautiful about that. In recent years, holidays associated with various other immigrant groups have begun to gain mainstream acceptance, most notably Cinco de Mayo, which has followed a similar path as St. Patrick's Day – started by activists to celebrate Mexican culture, embraced by people just looking for a good time. Lunar New Year and Dia De Los Muertos are also well on their way. When one culture's holiday becomes everyone's excuse to party, what's gained and what's lost? And how does it feel when it's your holiday? To find out, I go to a Chinese New Year party with no Chinese people and a Passover Seder with no Jewish people for this week's episode of The Sporkful podcast. Plus, comedian Jenny Yang offers advice for marketing new holidays: Gentile Passover \"We're going to read from Exodus tonight,\" explains Tiffany Wang, as she welcomes me to Gentile Passover, an annual gathering she and her sister, Charlene Wang de Chen, host. \"We don't have a Haggada,\" Tiffany continues, referring to the book Jews use as a guide at Passover Seder, or ritual meal, \"but we know the Passover story because we grew up in a Christian household.\" This Gentile Passover tradition began 10 years ago. Charlene was living in Beijing and read about how President Obama was hosting a Passover in the White House. She decided she'd host one, too, which is no surprise if you know how she and Tiffany were raised. They're Chinese-American, but every St. Patrick's Day their mom made corned beef, potatoes and cabbage. \"We love eating,\" says Charlene, \"and we just love learning more about cultures through their food traditions. That's obviously the funnest way to learn about it.\" Charlene scrambled around Beijing to gather the symbolic foods needed for a Passover Seder – salt water for tears, bitter herbs for the bitterness of slavery, and of course, matzo (unleavened bread), because Jews were fleeing the Egyptians and didn't have time for our bread to rise. (That last item required a few phone calls to obtain.) The first Gentile Passover was a big success. \"Everyone was so down for it, on an occasion none of them traditionally celebrate, which I thought was awesome,\" Charlene recalls. \"Everyone was bringing this openness.\" When I joined last year's Gentile Passover, I was the only Jewish person in the room. We were joined by Charlene's husband, Tony Chen, Tiffany's fiancé, and two friends, Tim Cotton and Anne-Laure Py. They proudly showed me the two different types of matzo they had purchased, and served me a delicious cocktail made with Campari and Manischewitz, the latter being a Jewish ceremonial wine that is the best wine because it's filled with sugar. The cocktail was fantastic, and the menu looked promising. Tiffany and Charlene had prepared matzo ball soup and short ribs, which made me very happy, because I've long advocated replacing the more traditional brisket with short ribs at Passover and all year round. There was a beautiful Seder plate, and even though I'm not especially religious myself, I was very impressed with the research and work they had done to respect the holiday's customs. I did cringe a bit when they told me they had rugelach, a Jewish pastry, for dessert. Most Jews would not serve rugelach at Passover because it contains leavened bread. Charlene and Tiffany knew that, but, they said, rugelach is delicious. I couldn't argue with that. We read the story of the Jews being freed from slavery in Egypt, as recounted in Exodus, and dinner was served. We skipped rituals like dipping parsley in salt water and putting bitter herbs on matzo. And that felt strange. At my family's Passover Seder, we use a Haggada written by my wife, Janie, that I love very much. But the part of it I know best is page 21. Because page 21 is where it says, \"Dinner is served.\" From the time we open that book I keep thinking, \"Please get me to page 21!\" In other words, I'm often eager to rush through the rituals. At Gentile Passover, I found myself missing them. It turns out those traditions mean more to me than I realized. And while the experience of watching people who aren't Jewish observe their version of customs I grew up with was in some ways strange and unsettling, it was also beautiful. I wondered about what my great-grandparents, who came to America from Eastern Europe, would think if they saw me celebrating Passover with two Chinese-American Christians, a Chinese-born Muslim, a S", "Passover, the Jewish holiday celebrating the Jews liberation from slavery in Egypt, begins tonight. As Here & Now resident chef Kathy Gunst tells hosts Robin Young and Jeremy Hobson, it’s also a time to celebrate tradition, family and food. She shares some of her favorite recipes with us. \nToasted Pistachio, Apricot, Date, Apple And Spiced Charoset\nPavlova (Flourless Meringue Cake) With Whipped Vanilla-Scented Cream And Summer Berries\nNancy’s Chicken Soup\n See more recipes and cooking segments with Kathy Gunst Toasted Pistachio, Apricot, Date, Apple And Spiced Charoset Kathy&#8217;s Note: Charoset (also called Haroset or Harossis) is a mixture of chopped nuts and apples, spices and wine that is consumed during the Seder meal on Passover. It is conventionally a symbol of the mortar or clay used for making bricks by Israelite slaves in Egypt. Some cooks make this condiment more like a paste, but I like to serve it like a chunky salad. This version uses dates, dried apricots, toasted pistachios and walnuts, apples and spices. Serve with matzah, butter and horseradish. The recipe can easily be doubled. Can be served as a condiment with brisket or roast lamb. Serves 4 to 6 Ingredients: 1/2 cup shelled pistachios 1/2 cup walnut halves 2 tart apples, peeled and chopped 1/2 cup chopped dried apricots 4 dried dates, pitted and chopped 1/4 cup raisins or sun-dried cranberries 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon allspice About 1/2 cup Kosher wine (Manischewitz is the tradition) Instructions: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place the pistachios and walnuts on a cookie sheet and bake on the middle shelf for 8 to 10 minutes or until the nuts smell nutty. Remove and cool and chop. In a large bowl mix the chopped nuts, apples, apricots, dates, raisins, cinnamon and allspice. Add the wine and mix. Serve cold or room temperature. Pavlova (Flourless Meringue Cake) With Whipped Vanilla-Scented Cream And Summer Berries Kathy&#8217;s Note: Flourless chocolate cake is a favorite on many Passover tables, but I love this meringue cake filled with spring berries and vanilla-scented whipped cream. While this is one of those desserts that looks like it took hours to put together, these meringues actually take very little time to prepare. What makes this cake so extraordinary is the contrast between the crisp and crunchy outside and the chewy, soft interior of the meringue. Use a variety of berries for color, texture, and flavor. Try not to make the cake on a humid day. The moisture in the air makes it difficult for the meringue to hold together and stay crisp. The cake can be made a day ahead of time and placed in a cool, dark spot. Don’t add whipped cream and berries until about 20 minutes before serving. Serves 8 Ingredients: For the meringue layers: Butter and confectioners’ sugar for preparing the pans 8 large egg whites, at room temperature 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar 2 cups superfine sugar (a specially sifted sugar) or 2 cups sugar, sifted* 2 tablespoons potato starch, sifted** 2 teaspoons lemon juice 2 teaspoons vanilla extract For the filling: 2 cups heavy (whipping) cream, chilled 1/3 cup sugar or confectioners’ sugar 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract About 3 cups mixed berries (raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, gooseberries, or any combination) About 1 cup grated unsweetened coconut, toasted on a baking sheet at 350 degrees for 10 minutes (optional) *Superfine sugar is not confectioners’ sugar. It is a specially sifted sugar, most often used for iced tea and baking, and is available in most grocery stores. For a quick substitution, add regular granulated sugar to a food processor and blend for a few minutes, until the sugar crystals break down to a fine consistency. **I normally use cornstarch as a thickener here but during Passover corn is not permitted. Look for potato starch in the section of your supermarket devoted to Passover. Instructions: Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Use a tiny bit of butter to attach the bottom of the paper to the baking sheets. Butter the paper lightly and dust with confectioner’s sugar. Trace the outline of a 9-inch pie plate, creating a 9-inch circle on each sheet of the parchment. Set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, use a whisk attachment to beat the egg whites on low speed until frothy. Increase the speed to medium-high and beat until soft peaks form. On medium speed, add the cream of tartar. Slowly add the superfine sugar and beat until soft peaks form, about 5 minutes. Add the sifted cornstarch and then the lemon juice and vanilla and beat until incorporated. Using a spoon or a rubber spatula carefully spread the meringue mixture over the marked circles. You don’t need to be overly precise. The idea is this: you want one circle to act as the base of the cake. Use your rubber spatula to smooth the meringue out into the circle to create a flat, even base. The second circle should have a slight rim and a depresse", "Think of a Halloween without candy corn. Thanksgiving without cranberry sauce. Easter without Peeps. That's what's happening: After 68 years of continuous production, Tam Tams will not be available for Passover this year. Native New Yorker Niki Russ Federman is part of the fourth generation to run her family's store, Russ and Daughters, on Manhattan's Houston Street. This is the store's busy season, when it's preparing countless orders for Passover, which starts next weekend. But one thing's missing, Federman says. \"A customer yesterday said he was going on strike from Passover if there weren't going to be any Tam Tams.\" The Tam Tam, for those who don't know, is a six-sided matzo cracker that has long been part of Jewish holiday tradition, especially around Passover, when matzo is the only option in the bread department. According to reports that first surfaced in the New Jersey Jewish News in late February, RAB Food Group, which owns the Manischewitz brand, encountered delays after installing a high-tech oven in its new facility in Newark, N.J. \"We didn't know about it until we went to place our order,\" Federman says. \"We made subsequent calls. ... It sounds like a technical glitch. They couldn't get the new oven up and running. So, no Tam Tams.\" It's true: BPP staffers could find no dusty boxes of last year's crackers in New York City. (A few boxes are being sold on eBay. A rabbi in Michigan is selling three — bidding starts at $10 — and plans to give the proceeds to an organization that fights hunger.) \"We have nothing left over,\" Federman says, confirming the state of things — even at venerable Russ and Daughters. \"I've heard stories of black-market Tam Tams.\" Why are the foods integral? \"It's all about the food you can and can't eat,\" Federman says. The Passover holiday commemorates the Jews' flight from Egypt, where they were slaves. Their departure was so abrupt, the story goes, that they could only bring unleavened bread. So, during Passover, no leavened products are allowed. \"It's not really a gastronomic holiday,\" Federman says, pointing out that the truly observant even avoid corn syrup and other products. Some people can't imagine this time without Tam Tams, she says. \"Holidays such as Passover, when you put history and tradition and food all together, it's a really powerful thing.\" She adds, \"Luckily we haven't had anyone freak out on us.\" A Manischewitz spokesperson told The New York Times that Tam Tams will be back on shelves by late April or early May. Federman says the shortage will not prevent Jews from observing Passover, and plenty of other matzo products are available. \"Tam tams are really more like Jewish Ritz crackers,\" she says. Asked what encouraged her to become a part of the family business, Federman talked about things more eternal than crackers. \"Russ and Daughters has been a fixture in New York since 1914,\" she says. \"It was started by my great-grandfather, who had a pushcart on the Lower East Side of New York. I think the fact that we've stayed a business — and stayed a family-run business — is really something special. It took me doing other things to realize how important small, historic, family-run businesses are, especially in a place like New York.\" And there are other perks. \"I eat well, too. I eat salmon and caviar every day.\" ALISON STEWART, host: Rachel, we do have one more story to get to. It's really hitting home for a few members of the BPP staff, and not surprisingly, it involves food. Sadly, the lack of it. RACHEL MARTIN, host: OK, imagine your favorite holiday comfort food, something you count on year after year. For me, it's potato casserole at Thanksgiving. Then one year, it just doesn't show up, totally MIA. STEWART: Think a Halloween without candy corn, Thanksgiving without cranberry, Easter without Peeps. That is what is happening after 68 years of continuous production. There will be no Tam Tams for Passover this year. MARTIN: Say it isn't so! For those of you who don't know, the Tam Tam is a six-sided cracker that's been part of holiday traditions for lots of Jewish families. And luckily, we have our very own representative here from one of New York's most prominent gastronomic traditions to help us make sense of it all. Native New Yorker, Niki Russ Federman, is part of the fourth generation to run her family's appetizing store, Russ & Daughters. It's on Manhattan's Houston Street. This is a very busy time, I imagine. They are preparing tons of orders for Passover. Only one thing's missing, the Tam Tam. Hey, Niki. Ms. NIKI RUSS FEDERMAN (Co-Owner, Russ & Daughters): Good morning. STEWART: You must see some sad faces in your store lately. Ms. FEDERMAN: A customer yesterday said he was going on strike from Passover if there weren't going to be any Tam Tams. MARTIN: Oh, my gosh. OK, so let's talk about how this has happened. According to reports that originated in the New Jersey Jewish News in late February, the R.A.B. Food Group, which app", "Passover celebrants will have a hip alternative to plum brandy this year. A Bay Area distillery has devised a kosher gin, a first, it tells the <em>San Francisco Chronicle</em>. To get around Jewish religious law forbidding grain during Passover, this gin is based in sugarcane alcohol.", "Grating horseradish is serious business. The volatile oil that's released can cut right through you. Leah Koenig, who has written six Jewish cookbooks, knows that firsthand. \"It kind of goes into your nose, and up into nasal cavities, and you kind of feel like you're getting a cleanse going on,\" Koenig laughs, \"but not a pleasant one.\" She has friends who wear gas masks or protective goggles when they prepare the root. Koenig has developed horseradish recipes in which it's mixed with vinegar to preserve its sharpness before it dissipates. But for her own Passover Seder, she borrows a trick from her in-laws, and cuts a fresh root into little matchsticks. Horseradish will be on many Seder tables for the start of Passover on Saturday, symbolizing the bitterness ancient Hebrews experienced during slavery in Egypt. It's part of the participatory ritual that is the Seder — something people do, and eat, and ask, to bring the past to life at the table. The Hebrew word for bitter herb, maror, comes from the same linguistic root of the word that's used to describe how Egyptians \"embittered\" the lives of the people they enslaved. And by eating it, participants are supposed to feel that hardship. \"You have this moment where you are feeling physical pain during the Seder,\" Koenig says. \"And whether or not you're specifically connecting that to how your ancestors felt, you are going through that moment.\" But that moment hasn't always been marked with the horseradish. Joshua Kulp, head of the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem, says that the bitter herbs on the Seder plate tell not only the story of the exodus from Egypt, but the story of the Jewish people in the diaspora. \"We can kind of trace Jewish history through what we eat for that bitter herb,\" Kulp says. \"And our origins are in the Torah as wandering nomadic people — shepherds, really.\" The Torah doesn't specify which bitter herbs. Kulp figures these shepherds probably grabbed some sprigs of oregano or hyssop or wild thyme. But by the second century C.E., Jews weren't shepherds. They were in Israel, under Greek and Roman rule. \"And when you look at the authoritative texts of Judaism, the Talmud identifies the bitter herb as lettuce. Which is surprising for a lot of people,\" Kulp says. It wouldn't be surprising for Sephardim, the Jews of the Spanish and Portuguese empires. They kept lettuce as their bitter herb, and their descendants still eat it during Passover Seders. But for those who moved into Central and Eastern Europe, there was no lettuce this time of year. \"So the horseradish began in about 14th century Germany,\" Kulp explains. \"Originally they only ate the leaves. And you find all sorts of interesting discussions continuing all the way through the 18th, 19th centuries concerning how much horseradish you have to eat. Can you grate it?\" When Kulp first learned this history, he was happy to add lettuce to his Seder table — and was surprised when his family rebelled. And now he has both at his Passover table. \"I serve the horseradish because it just doesn't feel like a Seder without the horseradish. I really think the way we act in life isn't what's written in a book,\" Kulp says. \"It's what we learned from our parents. It's what we learned from our grandparents. It's what makes us feel Jewish.\" For many American Jews, horseradish feels right because they're descended from Central and Eastern Europe immigrants, who came to America in large waves during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nora Rubel, chair of the religion department at the University of Rochester, says you find recipes with horseradish in the earliest American Jewish cookbooks, which makes sense. Jewish civilization flourished in Europe for centuries. \"Horseradish was very prevalent in German cooking, and I think that is what became a standard in what was seen as American Jewish food early on in Jewish American migration,\" Rubel says. On her Seder table, Rubel will feature fresh horseradish, as well as what she calls \"maror shots\" — horseradish-infused vodka. Of course, this particularly preparation isn't mentioned in any of the rabbinic texts. But Rubel argues alcohol, like the vinegar of prepared horseradish, is just another way of preserve those punchy compounds. \"I'm doing what my ancestors would have done,\" Rubel jokes. But whatever form the bitter herbs take, some argue that harshness and pain isn't a feeling people need much help accessing right now, on this second pandemic Passover. \"I don't think I need the bitter herbs this year,\" laughs food writer Leah Koenig. \"I think I'm there already. And I think my bitterness, it's less sharp than horseradish this year. My bitterness is more muted.\" Koenig, like a lot of people, hasn't had time to feel the full grief of what she's lost over the past year. She's been locked down with her family in a Brooklyn apartment, trying to work, checking in on her mom, and waiting to hear each day if elementary school is on quarantine again. It's how peo", "To kick off the celebration of Purim, BPP's executive producer Sharon Hoffman's kids challenge BPP's Laura Silver and Dan Pashman in a bake-off of biblical proportions.", "How do you say the Four Questions of Passover in Mende, a language of Sierra Leone? I've been wondering this in preparation for tonight, the eve of Passover. The ritual of the Four Questions kicks off the first Seder dinner by asking, \"Why is this night different from all other nights?\" to begin the story of how Israelite slaves escaped Egypt to freedom. But tonight, I'd like to ask the Four Questions in a different way. I want to say the words in Mende, one of the languages of my enslaved West and Central African forebears. This year, Passover week happens to coincide with the 150th anniversary of my ancestors' liberation from American chattel slavery: the surrender of Lee's army at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. On that day, when the waters parted and the 240-year nightmare was finally over, my ancestor Elijah Mitchell, a house servant about 15 years old, was standing near the battlefield with his older brother George. As the terms of surrender were negotiated, the brothers' slave holder told them they were free. It's a happy coincidence that this anniversary falls during the Jewish festival of freedom, a calendrical crossing of the streams, and I'm looking for a special way to mark the occasion. I've always mixed my African-Americanness and Jewishness on the Seder plate, a ritual dish with six foods that symbolize the story of Passover. First of all, in the place of bitter herbs, a reminder of the bitterness endured by the enslaved Israelites, I place collard greens. Collards can certainly be bitter, and in slave days they kept us healthy and alive despite a diet mostly of salt pork and dried corn. The roasted lamb shank bone, which symbolizes the temple sacrifice, becomes a roasted chicken leg, the sort packed into shoe box lunches by Southern black travelers heading north by train on the Great Migration, sacrificing their homes for the promise of freedom. Chickens were also among the few types of livestock that black slaves were allowed to keep for their own meals. The horseradish, with its nose-opening bite, is another reminder of slavery's sting. On my Seder plate, it's replaced by a spicy red pepper. White corn hoecakes, the hardtack of slavery, replace matzoh, and the spring vegetable is not parsley or white potato but a boiled sweet potato on a bed of fresh sweet potato leaves. My version of charoset, a sweet paste of nuts and fruit that recalls the bricks from which the pyramids were built, is made from sorghum molasses and pecans, showing how my people married the gifts of Africa with the bounty of America to build a new culture of sweetness and strength. A couple of the traditional Seder items work as they are. The boiled egg recalls African creation myths, and the salt water, the waves of the Middle Passage. Passover honors the story of all people who seek the simple freedom to live their potential. As Jews in India, Ethiopia, Iraq, Poland and China have done before me, I render the ancient codes in my own image and story. This year, the anniversary of my own family's liberation, I wanted to invite to my table my sixth great-grandmother, brought to Charleston before the Revolutionary War from Mende areas of Sierra Leone. A couple of days ago, I came across a book called 300 Ways to Ask the Four Questions, and was delighted to find one of those 300 is a version in Mende: Gbei kpškši ngi gba kpškši kpeema? Kpškš gbi, ma lewei mon gši lo meh; keh kpškši ngi, matsui lea mia. It's hard to pronounce, but I've been practicing, and I think I got it down. Tonight, with the foods of the African Diaspora before us, mixed and fused with Jewish food from around the world, I'll welcome my ancestors to the table of freedom so that we might all enter the Promised Land together, as a family. Michael W. Twitty blogs at Afroculinaria, exploring African-American and African Diaspora culinary history and culture. He is working on his first book, The Cooking Gene, for HarperCollins.", "When Cokie and Steve Roberts married in 1966, they faced a choice familiar to many mixed-faith couples: practice no religion, pick one or the other, or find ways to observe both. They decided upon the latter. In Our Haggadah: Uniting Traditions for Interfaith Families, the couple describes their approach to celebrating Passover with family and friends of all faiths. For couples bridging Judaism and other faiths, Passover \"is a gateway\" holiday, says ABC political analyst Steve Roberts: \"You can do it at home, and also you do it in your own way.\" That's not to say that developing a Seder — the ritual Passover meal — to fit their unique family was simple. NPR senior news analyst Cokie Roberts was from a \"very Catholic\" family, she tells NPR's Neal Conan; her mother, Lindy Boggs, was appointed the United States' ambassador to the Vatican after serving in the U.S. Congress as a Representative from Louisiana. \"You don't get a whole lot more Catholic than that,\" Cokie says. And when it came to developing a new Roberts Passover tradition, Steve had little experience of his own to bring to the effort. His family, while \"tribally and culturally Jewish,\" was not very religiously observant. \"The whole notion of us actually celebrating the Seder was sort of strange to [my mother],\" he says. \"She often said ... the first Seder she ever went to was organized by her Catholic daughter-in-law.\" But while the new couple knew they wanted to meld their religious traditions at home, figuring out exactly how to do that was another matter. Hosting her first Passover Seder in 1969 was an intimidating experience, Cokie says. \"It's hard enough just to have a dinner party, much less to have one where you have strange foods and the table looks different from any other night.\" Cokie had brought a Haggadah — the Jewish text that guides the Seder — from a local synagogue to direct the evening's rituals, but quickly found there were many critics in the room. \"I had a lot of friends who felt free to comment,\" she says. \" 'Oh, you left out this part' ... 'Wait a minute, you shouldn't have put that part in,' and all that.\" The next year, she decided it was time to create a uniquely Roberts Haggadah. \"I gathered up a bunch of Haggadahs, including the Maxwell House classic, and sat down at my Smith Corona manual typewriter ... and typed up our Haggadah. And this book is basically that service,\" she says. The Roberts' have tweaked their book over the years, with input from family and friends of many different faiths. But even with those multicultural, personal touches, Cokie says, \"it's not at all hippie-dippy by any means. It does have four children, instead of four sons,\" she says, referring to a traditional story told at the Seder table about four sons who inquire about the meaning of Passover: one who is wise, one who is wicked, one who is simple and one who does not know how to ask. (\"And I was kind and didn't make both the wicked one and the simple one boys,\" she adds.) The Roberts are also quick to note that their Haggadah, while a \"mishmash,\" is \"not Chrisitianized in any way. ... This is very much a Jewish ceremony that we celebrate.\" Even so, Christians will find plenty to relate to in Our Haggadah, Steve says. \"It's a Jewish holiday, but it's a universal message.\" \"The Last Supper that is so celebrated in art was a Seder,\" Cokie says. \"The meaning of ... going from slavery to freedom, from death to life are the same. ... There are many things that make you feel more together than apart.\" Actually \"our Haggadah\" has never looked anything like this. For more than forty years, a stapled together sheaf of papers wearing varying degrees of wine and mint sauce stains — that's been our Haggadah. The original one dates to 1970, and we still have a few copies, typed out on an old Smith-Corona, interspersed with more than a few typos, printed on that shiny paper used by the first copying machines. We revised it once, after twenty-five years, when our neighbor, and a regular participant in our Seders, Doug Firstenberg, offered to print up better typed, more readable copies. At first, we heard howls of protest from our friends — where were the marks and mistakes? It didn't take long of course for us to infuse the \"Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition\" with a new set of wine stains. Our Haggadah has also been something of a mishmash where we go back and forth from our homemade sheets to what we call the \"blue book,\" a Haggadah published by the Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation that we've used for decades as a supplement to the typewritten pages. Every year Steve and I argue about exactly where in the service we first move to the book, causing hoots and hollers from our longtime Seder buddies who have come to see this dispute as a Passover tradition. It's just one of the many Passover traditions — some silly, some special — that we and our friends, old and new, have come to anticipate annually as we celebrate the festival of freedom that is at the ", "Jewish families will gather this Saturday night to celebrate the beginning of Hanukkah. Host Michel Martin takes a look at some of the not-so-typical families who are changing the face of Judaism. She speaks with Rabbi Steven Greenberg, one of the pioneers of a growing movement of openly gay Orthodox Jews.", "Wednesday is the second day of Passover, the eight-day holiday remembering the Jewish exodus from slavery in Egypt. It&#8217;s also marathon season, with runners around the country lacing up for 11 different marathons over the next six days, including one in Kentucky, another in New Mexico and the iconic Boston Marathon. The connection? Well, runners observing Passover have to forgo the most basic staples of marathon training and racing: bagels, oatmeal, Gu (that mushy sugar and electrolyte concoction) and of course, the traditional pasta dinner. So what should they do? Here & Now&#8217;s Robin Young checks in with Orthodox Rabbi Eli Glaser, who also happens to be a marathon runner and a nutritionist. Tips For Training While Observing Passover\n\nMushed/crushed dates and raisins with banana can replace gels or &#8220;GU.&#8221;\nMix dried fruit with almond slivers to create grain-free energy bars.\nPotatoes and sweet potatoes are easy to digest and can replace pasta. (There are some kosher-for-Passover pastas made of potato flour)\nQuinoa is an allowable carbohydrate. Contrary to popular belief, it is a vegetable and not a grain.\nMatzah can replace bread, but runners be forewarned: some people believe it slows digestion and can be hard on the stomach on race day. So practice first!\nSalt tablets including SaltStick Caps can replace Gatorade (also something to attempt before marathon day).\nVitamin Water is an acceptable training beverage.\nIf you are unsure of whether a product is kosher for Passover, there’s a hotline to call: 212-613-8241.\n\nGuest\n\nEli Glaser, rabbi and nutritionist who is also head of Soveya, which promotes health through nutrition.\n ROBIN YOUNG, HOST: From NPR and WBUR Boston, I'm Robin Young. It's HERE AND NOW. And as you no doubt have picked up, it's marathon season. The iconic Boston marathon is next Monday. But there are 10 other races in the next six days, one in Kentucky, another in New Mexico. And we want to take a few minutes now to talk about an interesting intersection of marathon season and Passover. This is the second day of the holiday remembering the Jewish exodus from slavery in Egypt. The connection? Well, observant runners have to forego the most basic staples of marathon training: bagels, GU - that mushy sugar and electrolyte concoction - and the traditional pasta dinner. Rabbi Eli Glaser is - well, he's the perfect guest. He's an orthodox rabbi, a marathon runner and a nutritionist. He joins us from WYPR in Baltimore. And, rabbi, some know the story: Jews had to flee so quickly they didn't have time to rise the bread, so eat leavened to commemorate that. But explain further. Why can't observant Jews eat certain training foods on Passover? RABBI ELI GLASER: Well, because on Passover, we're prohibited from having any grain products or any legume or any derivatives of legumes or grain products. And legumes, really, is a larger classification to include beans and corn and rice and anything that can be either harvested with grain products, with wheat or has a similar appearance. YOUNG: So you mentioned you can't eat any breads or pastas, any kind of grain, anything not certified kosher for Passover. How do you replace those? GLASER: Right. So it's a great question. So, really, what you're looking to do is to get electrolytes in your body to get glucose to build up your muscles to avoid cramping, to avoid any type of fatigue. So, therefore, you really want to make sure that you are consuming sodium, potassium, electrolytes. And you can certainly replace those without the normal foods or easy-to-use jells and GUs that are marketed. In fact, I'm a natural nutritionist and also a marathon runner and orthodox Jew. I train the whole year without any of those. Dates are a staple of my training as well as bananas. And those are certainly kosher for Passover. And you want to make it, you know, mushy so it's not something you have to chew as you're trying to run. And you can crush dates and have almond slivers to get protein. And that's really a great fuel to use during a run or during training, as well as the electrolytes in your body - you can use smart water, which is nothing more than water with electrolytes added. And a lot of times, people will take salt tablets to help their muscles fight fatigue. And I looked up and there's one called SaltStick that ingredients don't have any of the prohibited kosher for Passover ingredients. So that's something, again, if someone would be training or be trying to recover from a run could use. In addition, there are, you know, two kind of groups in the Jewish world called Ashkenazim and Sephardim. Sephardim are Jews from Spain or from North Africa or Middle Eastern countries, and Ashkenazi Jews are Jews primarily from European descent. And there, there are different customs that have evolved over the years. And one of the customs that Ashkenazim have is not to consume legumes or other types of products like that or the derivatives. However, someone ", "Jews around the world are celebrating the beginning of Passover tonight. The holiday commemorates the exodus from slavery into freedom. For Jews in Ukraine, the holiday has an especially powerful meaning this year, coming on the heels of a secular revolution. NPR’s Ari Shapiro reports for Here & Now from Donetsk. At every Passover table tonight, the youngest child will sing this song. Children at a synagogue in Kiev are learning the words to &#8220;Mah Nishtana.&#8221; They ask in Hebrew: What makes this night different from all other nights? Adults in Ukraine can ask a similar question this year: What makes this Passover different from all others? It&#8217;s a question Rabbi Alexander Duchovny has been thinking about a lot. He uses a Hebrew phrase to describe it. &#8220;Passover is z’man heiruteinu. Time of our liberty. Time of freedom. And especially for Ukrainian Jewry, and for Ukrainians. This is time of liberty,&#8221; he says. Duchovny is a progressive rabbi, and like many Jews in Kiev, he joined thousands of protesters in Independence Square this winter, demanding a change in government. In the Passover story, Moses demands that Pharaoh &#8220;Let my people go.&#8221; And Duchovny sees a thread connecting ancient Egypt to modern-day Ukraine. &#8220;We started our liberation 3,000 years ago, and we still are in the process,&#8221; he says. &#8220;Liberation never ends. Liberation starts. And it goes and goes and goes. And this is what Jewish people learned during the centuries.&#8221;&ndash; Rabbi Alexander Duchovny The last century of this struggle has been especially difficult for Ukrainian Jews. Massacres. Pogroms. And of course, the Holocaust. Rabbi Duchovny says he is only alive today because a Ukrainian family sheltered his mother during the war. &#8220;My mother was a teenager when she was taken to be killed. On the way to be killed, she ran away together with her younger sister and a Ukrainian family saved my mother.&#8221; Ukrainian Nazi collaborators killed his grandparents, his aunts, and his uncles. But he chooses to focus on the other side of the coin: The Ukrainians who kept his mother alive. Decades after the Holocaust, during the Soviet era, people whose passport said &#8220;Jewish&#8221; were not allowed to attend the University of Kiev. Leonid Fineberg had that experience. Today, Fineberg runs the Jewish studies department at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, the university that once refused to admit Jews. &#8220;The rate of anti-Semitism in Soviet times was extremely high. But it wasn&#8217;t just Jewish people. Ukrainian dissidents couldn&#8217;t find jobs either. Everybody had these problems,&#8221; Fineberg says. Across town, there’s a Hasidic synagogue, where Orthodox Jews have been worshipping, sometimes in secret, for more than 100 years. Israel Radutsky is the groundskeeper here. He remembers when he was a child how cautious people had to be when they celebrated this holiday. &#8220;People could come here at Passover and get some matzah,&#8221; he says. &#8220;But they had to hide it inside of a pillowcase so nobody knew they were carrying it.&#8221; So now, the people of Ukraine have overthrown the government they saw as oppressive and corrupt. But the story is still unfolding. Protesters and government forces are shooting at each other in the East. Russia has annexed Crimea. Rabbi Duchovny says this underscores a central lesson of the Jewish experience. &#8220; \n \n Liberation never ends. Liberation starts. And it goes and goes and goes.&thinsp;\n \n \n \n TWEET\n \n \n And this is what Jewish people learned during the centuries.&#8221; I asked each person I interviewed: Where in the Passover story are Ukraine&#8217;s Jews right now? Are you enslaved in Egypt, still living under the Pharaoh? Are you wandering in the desert for 40 years? Everybody gave a different answer. But not one person said they had reached the promised land. Reporter\n\nAri Shapiro, NPR International Correspondent. He tweets @AriShapiro.\n JEREMY HOBSON, HOST: From NPR and WBUR Boston, I'm Jeremy Hobson. ROBIN YOUNG, HOST: I'm Robin Young. It's HERE AND NOW. In a few minutes, on the eve of the anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing, what's it like to be seen as a symbol of strength for surviving the bombs when you don't often feel that strong? We'll speak with double amputee Jeff Bauman. HOBSON: But first, to the situation in eastern Ukraine. Today a deadline that had been set by the Ukrainian government for pro-Russian militants to vacate buildings that they've been occupying in the eastern part of the country passed, and so far it appears that deadline is not being enforced. In fact in the city of Horlivka, a pro-Russian mob ransacked a police station this morning. (SOUNDBITE OF BREAKING GLAS", "Why is today different from all other days? Because it's time to make the annual pilgrimage home for Passover. (And because I must excavate the little bit of Hebrew I know from the dusty shelves of my mind, in order to do the four questions, until my niece is old enough to do it. I think she's faking, personally.) My family likes to use a pre-World War II Haggadah -- I suppose there's something poignant in reading about Pharaoh before Hitler. But this year, my favorite Haggadah is by far, this one: Moses Is Departing Egypt: A Facebook Haggadah. I'm pretty sure you don't need to be Jewish to read it, so go forth and giggle.", "As Thanksgiving approaches and families need to stay safe during the pandemic, NPR offers tips from lessons learned during the Jewish High Holidays and Islamic Eid celebrations this year.", "Commentator Laura Lorson muses about her family's offbeat holiday rituals, which include thanking God for the oddly assorted silverware on their table and telling tales about now deceased relatives.", "Commentator Aaron Freeman claims that when his twin daughters had their Bat Mitzvahs this year, his family threw the cheapest party of the season in Highland Park, Ill. The results were far from tragic.", "During the holidays, many gather to share family histories. NPR's Michel Martin talks with NPR senior business editor Uri Berliner and his father, Gert Berliner, about his Holocaust experience.", "Passover is a holiday of freedom, celebrating the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt. And what would a holiday celebration be without a festive meal? Resident chef Kathy Gunst spoke with Here & Now&#8216;s Robin Young and Jeremy Hobson in 2016 about her favorite Passover foods and recipes. \nToasted Pistachio, Apricot, Date, Apple And Spiced Charoset Charoset (also called Haroset or Harossis) is a mixture of chopped nuts and apples, spices and wine that is consumed during the Seder meal on Passover. It is conventionally a symbol of the mortar or clay used for making bricks by Israelite slaves in Egypt. Some cooks make this condiment more like a paste, but I like to serve it like a chunky salad. This version uses dates, dried apricots, toasted pistachios and walnuts, apples and spices. Serve with matzah, butter and horseradish. The recipe can easily be doubled. Can be served as a condiment with brisket or roast lamb. Serves 4 to 6. Ingredients \n1/2 cup shelled pistachios\n1/2 cup walnut halves\n2 tart apples, peeled and chopped\n1/2 cup chopped dried apricots\n4 dried dates, pitted and chopped\n1/4 cup raisins or sun-dried cranberries\n1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon\n1/4 teaspoon allspice\nAbout 1/2 cup Kosher wine (Manischewitz is the tradition)\n Instructions \nPreheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place the pistachios and walnuts on a cookie sheet and bake on the middle shelf for 8 to 10 minutes or until the nuts smell nutty. Remove and cool and chop.\nIn a large bowl mix the chopped nuts, apples, apricots, dates, raisins, cinnamon and allspice. Add the wine and mix. Serve cold or room temperature.\n\nPavlova (Flourless Meringue Cake) With Whipped Vanilla-Scented Cream And Summer Berries Flourless chocolate cake is a favorite on many Passover tables, but I love this meringue cake filled with spring berries and vanilla-scented whipped cream. While this is one of those desserts that looks like it took hours to put together, these meringues actually take very little time to prepare. What makes this cake so extraordinary is the contrast between the crisp and crunchy outside and the chewy, soft interior of the meringue. Use a variety of berries for color, texture, and flavor. Try not to make the cake on a humid day. The moisture in the air makes it difficult for the meringue to hold together and stay crisp. The cake can be made a day ahead of time and placed in a cool, dark spot. Don’t add whipped cream and berries until about 20 minutes before serving. Serves 8. Ingredients For the meringue layers: \nButter and confectioners’ sugar for preparing the pans\n8 large egg whites, at room temperature\n1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar\n2 cups superfine sugar (a specially sifted sugar) or 2 cups sugar, sifted*\n2 tablespoons potato starch, sifted**\n2 teaspoons lemon juice\n2 teaspoons vanilla extract\n For the filling: \n2 cups heavy (whipping) cream, chilled\n1/3 cup sugar or confectioners’ sugar\n1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract\nAbout 3 cups mixed berries (raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, gooseberries, or any combination)\nAbout 1 cup grated unsweetened coconut, toasted on a baking sheet at 350 degrees for 10 minutes (optional)\n *Superfine sugar is not confectioners’ sugar. It is a specially sifted sugar, most often used for iced tea and baking, and is available in most grocery stores. For a quick substitution, add regular granulated sugar to a food processor and blend for a few minutes, until the sugar crystals break down to a fine consistency. **I normally use cornstarch as a thickener here but during Passover corn is not permitted. Look for potato starch in the section of your supermarket devoted to Passover. Instructions \nPreheat the oven to 250 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Use a tiny bit of butter to attach the bottom of the paper to the baking sheets. Butter the paper lightly and dust with confectioner’s sugar. Trace the outline of a 9-inch pie plate, creating a 9-inch circle on each sheet of the parchment. Set aside.\nIn the bowl of an electric mixer, use a whisk attachment to beat the egg whites on low speed until frothy. Increase the speed to medium-high and beat until soft peaks form. On medium speed, add the cream of tartar. Slowly add the superfine sugar and beat until soft peaks form, about 5 minutes. Add the sifted cornstarch and then the lemon juice and vanilla and beat until incorporated.\nUsing a spoon or a rubber spatula carefully spread the meringue mixture over the marked circles. You don’t need to be overly precise. The idea is this: you want one circle to act as the base of the cake. Use your rubber spatula to smooth the meringue out into the circle to create a flat, even base. The second circle should have a slight rim and a depressed center (which will later be filled with the whipped cream and fruit) and will act as the top, show-off layer of the cake. Use a rubber spatula to create an indent in the center, pushing the meringue mixture out away from the center and off to the sid", "Passover is a holiday celebrating the Jews' exodus from slavery — and also a broader embrace of the coming spring, of fresh green shoots both literal and metaphorical. But the menu? More often than not, in America, you're talking stodgy winter foods like gefilte fish and brisket, seasoned (if at all) with heavy aromatics. These aren't dishes that point to the coming spring. They're dishes that come from the root cellar. That's because the majority of American Jews are Ashkenazim, with roots in chilly Eastern Europe. But cookbook writer and culinary instructor Jennifer Abadi's family (and family recipes) came from Syria. Growing up, Seder meals involved lamb shanks and lemony soup with rice and meatballs. And after teaching cooking classes where students were hungry for these sunnier flavors, she began collecting recipes from other Sephardic and Judeo-Arabic first-generation families, preserving both the dishes and the stories behind them. Abadi's new cookbook, Too Good To Passover, collects Passover recipes from nearly two dozen countries, from Algeria (where broken-up matzo is steamed in a couscousiere) to Georgia (where a sheet of softened matzo would be used instead of a not-kosher-for-Passover crepe to wrap chicken or cheese blinchiki). The book also captures oral histories of the traditions that unfold around a Seder table — from sealing drops of wine in a bottle representing the traditional curses of one's enemies (Iraq) to circling the Seder plate over the head of each participant (Gibraltar). The recipes themselves span such a geographic range that it's hard to find a particularly unifying dish or flavor palette. Not even rice. Many American Jews assume Sephardic Jews continue to eat kitniyot — the small items like rice and legumes that many Ashkenazim cut from their Passover diets. But Abadi found even this is not universal. \"It was really hard to say with absolute confirmation that people who were from all the Middle East and Mediterranean ate rice, and that as soon as you went into Poland, Russia, and so on you didn't,\" Abadi explains. \"What I found was a tendency. A tendency for the Syrians to eat rice ... Moroccans not to eat rice, while Tunisians tended to eat rice.\" Abadi says it's not just, say, North Africa versus the Mediterranean versus Central Asia. \"It's a general tendency in a region, but then it came down to often even just a matter of what city and town you were from, and how old you were when you were there (because that was maybe the jurisdiction of a certain rabbi), or a certain immigrant group that might have settled there from somewhere else, and brought with them their custom of eating (or not eating).\" But while there is diversity, there are some delicious flavors you won't find in the chillier climes of Eastern Europe: the saffron, the lamb, the piles of fresh herbs. Many of the recipes Abadi collected have made their way onto her own Passover table — especially the layered matzo pies, and the fritters and doughnuts you find cropping up in a surprising number of countries. \"It's like matzo brei,\" laughs Abadi, about the concept of frying up bits of matzo in an eggy batter. \"A Bukharian couple showed a matzo babka. And then in the Syrian world, we have something we call ijeh, a fritter. Usually it's meat with spices and onions, and in this case it would be broken-down matzo. And then when you get to the Greek/Turkish/Bulgarian tradition, you'll have the bimuelos [fritters common in the Ottoman empire].\" Reading through the book raises the question of what it actually means for something to be a Passover dish. Sure, there are items like matzo or charoset (the paste of fruit and nuts) which actually have a ceremonial role. But what about the other dishes? It turns out that in the Sephardic and Judeo-Arabic world — like in the Ashkenazi world — this can be a fuzzy line. Some of these are just dishes that were common in a particular place and time. \"Certain communities will often take a food that they know, and then they'll change it slightly, and make it their own. Because recipes are always evolving,\" explains Abadi. Dishes like gefilte fish and brisket, for example, which are now required dining on many Jewish holiday tables, were just nice dinners years ago in Eastern Europe. But over time, with tradition, immigration, and culinary identity, they took on a greater, more specific importance. And so it is with many of the recipes Abadi collected. \"Certainly some dishes, if they're served for Passover only, they become Jewish,\" Abadi explains. Many of the dishes of a particular region became Passover dishes when they were made with matzo — like American Jews' matzo pizza. And while a Bulgarian layered herb and cheese pie may have a more exciting flavor profile than, say, gefilte fish, it shares a similar sentimental attachment. Because these dishes are ties to a collective past. And Passover itself, a holiday celebrating a biblical exodus, takes on special importance for those ", "The Passover Seder is usually described as a ceremonial meal: Participants sit down to a set of ritualized foods and tell the story of the exodus from Egypt. But more than just tell it, Jews are bidden to relive it. We engage in ritual and discussion and debate, until each of us feels that we've made a journey ourselves. It's a singular, time-stopping evening. But it can take a very long time. And while there are a few ceremonial bites along the way — a bit of matzo, some horseradish — the actual \"meal\" part of the Seder may not happen for hours. Which means that before you start your Seder, you might want to consider some appetizers. Yes, there are some rabbinic arguments for fasting until the meal begins, to experience some of the deprivation of the historical slavery the Seder re-enacts (and whet the appetite for otherwise-not-so-appealing matzo). Some families observe this directive, while many others try to keep the also-Jewish spirit of hospitality and make sure guests are greeted with some nibbles as they arrive. But even those who prepare appetizers might not put all that much time and thought into them. After all, you're hosting a seated holiday meal — often for a sizable crowd. You've been cleaning the house, polishing the silver and simmering the matzo ball soup. Appetizers? Maybe a swipe of chopped liver on matzo, next to a dish of celery and radishes. Sure, it gets the job done. And maybe it engenders some sentimental just-like-Grandma-used-to-make memories. But really, it's a holiday, celebrating freedom and the green shoots of spring. We can do better. Still, we want to work within certain constraints. First off, nothing that involves too much last-minute fussing. Did I mention the matzo ball soup? And the brisket? And the relatives to wrangle? We want dishes that can be made in advance, with a minimum of hassle before serving. Also, we want something that belongs to the holiday. Traditional ingredients — eggs, which symbolize the Passover offering and the cycles of birth and death; horseradish, to commemorate the harshness of slavery — let you know that even this bit of nosh is ushering in this once-a-year occasion. And, most important, we want it to be good. This is a time when we're sitting down to remember and re-enact the past. And we want this evening also to be one we will remember. With family, ceremony and a sense of something larger than ourselves. And snacks. Deviled Eggs With Horseradish Orange Gremolata Eggs, a beautifully symbolic food, are often dipped in saltwater and eaten during the Passover Seder. Here they're fancied up into crowd-pleasing deviled eggs, topped with a spring-green gremolata. Usually used to spark up osso buco, gremolata is here given a Passover nod with a bite of horseradish, perfectly paired with sweet orange zest. Makes 1 dozen Eggs 12 eggs About 1/4 cup mayonnaise 1 teaspoon Dijon-style mustard A few dashes of hot sauce or a pinch of cayenne A squeeze of lemon juice Salt and pepper Gremolata 1/2 bunch parsley, washed and minced (about 1/3 cup) 2 tablespoons finely grated fresh horseradish root Zest of 1 orange About 1 tablespoon olive oil Salt and pepper Place the eggs in a saucepan and cover with cold water by 1 inch. Cover and bring to a boil. As soon as the water begins boiling, turn off the heat and let stand, covered, for 10 minutes. Drain and rinse with cold water until cold enough to peel. While the eggs are cooling, you can prepare the gremolata. Mix together the parsley, horseradish and orange zest in a small bowl, adding just enough oil to slightly moisten. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and set aside (the horseradish will mellow slightly after grating, but it should still have plenty of spunk). Peel the eggs, cut in half and pop the yolks out into a small mixing bowl. Add the mayonnaise, mustard, hot sauce and lemon juice to the bowl. Mash until smooth (you can use a mixer if desired), add salt and pepper, and adjust seasonings to taste. Add more mayonnaise if needed for a smooth consistency. To assemble, spoon the yolk mixture into the reserved whites (you can also pipe it into the whites using a pastry bag, or a plastic bag with a corner snipped off). Arrange on a platter, and scatter the gremolata over the top. Serve. Honey-Roasted Smashed Winter Squash With Feta And Zhoug Yes, Passover is a celebration of spring. But if asparagus spears haven't yet poked through your soils, try this dish instead. Winter squash and feta, commonly paired in Sephardic turnovers, are here brightened up with zhoug, a sort of chili-laced Middle Eastern chimichurri (this version has significantly less fire than is standard, but still adds brightness). The resulting dish is a lovely springtime interplay of sweet and herbal, rich and briny, perfect when spread on a bit of matzo. Serves 8 to 12 as an appetizer Zhoug 3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced or crushed 1 fresh green chili, such as serrano, stemmed and seeded 1 handful parsley 1 bunch fresh cilantro", "On Friday, many Jewish families will mark the first night of Passover with a special Seder dinner. During this ceremonial meal, family members retell the story of Exodus. \"Passover is the night when we celebrate our redemption from Egypt many years ago,\" Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Sholom, the National Synagogue, tells NPR's Michel Martin. Herzfeld says wine plays a large role in the Seder dinner because Passover is meant to be a joyful time when Jews celebrate their freedom from bondage. For each of the four major rituals, participants drink one glass of wine. In the past, the options for kosher wine were limited and didn't exactly thrill wine lovers. But kosher wine enthusiasts say all of that has changed, and now there are hundreds of options from around the world. What Makes Wine Kosher? Kosher wine aficionado Yossie Horwitz gives a general idea of what many observant Jews look for in this wine. He says there are two basic requirements: From the time the grapes arrive at the winery to the time the wine is bottled, everything must be handled by Sabbath-observing Jews. Also, every ingredient in the wine needs to be kosher. Observant Jews also believe that if a non-Jew opens and serves a bottle of wine, it's no longer kosher. To get around that rule, Horwitz says, there's a concept called mevushal, which in Hebrew literally means \"cooked.\" \"If the wine has been boiled, then any person can handle the wine without rendering it unkosher,\" says Horwitz. He adds that, over the years, winemakers have developed flash pasteurization techniques that have very little effect on the taste of the wine. Why The Bad Reputation? The \"kosher wine revolution,\" as Horwitz calls it, has been a long time coming. He says options for kosher wine have been increasing for the past 30 years mainly because of growing demand by more sophisticated kosher wine consumers. Horwitz says that for most people who do not drink kosher wine on a regular basis, their idea of kosher wine is Manischewitz. And that wine can be sweet, thick and \"not exactly what you would serve with a fine meal.\" Horwitz says he maintains a high bar when it comes to kosher wine. He is a regular judge for Jewish Week's annual Kosher Wine Guide, and in the past year he sampled more than 700 kosher wines, he says. Adds Herzfeld, \"Yossie told me that he only serves wine at the Seder that he would serve to the Messiah when he comes.\" But for those sitting at the Seder table who would rather pass on wine altogether, the rabbi has an alternative: grape juice. \"If you can't drink wine, then you can drink grape juice and you can fulfill your commandment and the ritual requirement to drink wine,\" Herzfeld says. MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: We are going to continue our Faith Matters conversation now with a look at Passover. Tonight, Jewish families will get together for a special Seder dinner. That's a ceremonial meal that begins the holiday. They will retell the story of Moses, who freed the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. They'll eat matzo, or unleavened bread, and they will drink four glasses of wine. And, when it comes to kosher wine, there used to be, let's say, slim pickings, and they weren't generally known as taste sensations. But our next guests say that is no longer the case. The kosher wine world now offers hundreds of options from all over the world. Here to tell us more about that, Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld. He is the senior rabbi at Ohev Sholom, the National Synagogue in Washington, D.C. He joins us often to tell us more about the Jewish holidays and customs. And, also with us, Yossie Horwitz. He is a lawyer by day and a wine aficionado by night. He's also a regular judge for Jewish Week's annual Kosher Wine Guide, and he writes a newsletter about kosher wine. Gentlemen, thank you both so much for joining us. RABBI SHMUEL HERZFELD: It's good to be here, Michel. YOSSIE HORWITZ: Thank you, Michel, for having us. MARTIN: So, Rabbi, could you just tell us, first of all, what is the role of wine in Passover, and why is it customary for Jews to drink four cups of wine during the Seder? HERZFELD: Passover is the night where we celebrate our redemption from Egypt many years ago. And one of the keys to making a Passover Seder meaningful and engaging everyone in the Passover Seder is to actually view ourselves as having been redeemed this night. And so tonight, as we sit at our Seder, we are going to be celebrating our freedom from bondage. And one of the ways our rabbis teach us that we celebrate is by drinking wine. It's a festive occasion, and so that's why we have four cups of wine at the Passover Seder. There are two explanations for four. One is that it corresponds to four expressions of redemption when God speaks to Moses in the book of Exodus. And the second explanation is that, at every ritual that we do, we try to have wine. And there are four major parts to the Passover Seder that we drink wine for. MARTIN: Yossi, can you explain to us briefly what makes a wine kosher", "Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, famous for her legal pen, has now written a short essay for a different occasion: Passover. The essay highlights the key roles played by five women in the Exodus story: Moses' mother and sister; the midwives who defied Pharaoh's decree to kill the Israelite baby boys; and Pharaoh's own daughter, who defied her father to pluck the baby Moses out of the Nile. \"These women had a vision leading out of the darkness shrouding their world,\" Ginsburg wrote. \"They were women of action, prepared to defy authority to make their vision a reality bathed in the light of the day. \" The essay, published by the humanitarian group American Jewish World Service, is presented as something to be used at the ritual Seder that begins the Passover holiday April 3. Ginsburg's coauthor on the piece is Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt of the conservative Adas Israel synagogue in Washington, D.C. Holtzblatt is married to one of Ginsburg's law clerks, and she says that the justice asked her to help research the themes that Ginsburg wanted to write about in her essay. The rabbi says that she served as a sort of \"biblical clerk\" and was overwhelmed when Ginsburg said she planned to list her as coauthor.", "Forget the demon sheep and the floating Boxer blimp. There's something new from Carly Fiorina. Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard CEO who is a Republican candidate for the Senate from California, is well known on this blog for doing things, shall we say, differently. Now Ben Smith at Politico reports that Fiorina sent a letter to her supporters yesterday in honor of the first night of the Jewish holiday of Passover, which she described as a time where \"we break bread and spend time with our families and friends.\" Um, Passover is the holiday in which Jews celebrate their escape from bondage in Egypt in which for eight days they eat Matzoh in place of bread. Here's the Fiorina e-mail message: Passover is a time of remembrance and thanks. This festival provides us all -- Jewish, Christian and all faiths -- an opportunity to reflect on the challenges we have faced and the triumphs we have achieved together. It is also a reminder of the resilient spirit that has carried people through trials of every kind through every generation. This week, as we break bread and spend time with our families and friends, I hope we also take a moment to say a word of thanks for our freedom and for those who have given their lives in freedom's name. Let us also look ahead with hope to the opportunities to come. Maybe she meant to say \"as we break unleavened bread?\" And speaking of fleeing from bondage, what's this stuff about an RNC staffer submitting expenses from a visit to sex nightclub in West Hollywood? Can't make this stuff up.", "Nepal has long been a favorite destination of young Israeli tourist backpackers – so much so that the organization Chabad-Lubavitch puts on a huge Passover celebration to accommodate them.", "In an attack on a synagogue in Poway, Calif., on Saturday, authorities say a man killed one person and injured three others, including Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, on the final day of Passover." ]

[ "Bird checklist dated May 4, 1932. This checklist was used by Walter Rosene to record birds sighted around Boone County between 5:30 and 9:00." ]

[ "M. Haren, B.E.C. Nordin, C.E.M. Pearce, P. O’Loughlin, I. Chapman, J.E. Morley and G.A. Wittert", "Published June 1936. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog", "A list of birds sighted by Eugene Armstrong and others. This item was used as supporting documentation for the Iowa Ornithologists Union Quarterly field report of Summer 1983.", "We study effective SU(2) gauge field actions that include bound-state contributions from the fermion determinant. Drawing on an analogy with polymers, we construct polaron-extrema--instanton--anti-instanton structures bound by localized fermion-antifermion pairs. We argue that they are the relevant ones when massless fermions are present. As a check on our methods, we redo 't Hooft's calculation by computing instanton zero modes and determinants from the scattering data of exactly solvable one-dimensional problems with Morse-Rosen potentials.", "Published August 1940. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog", "This image was scanned from the Slide Scan Project 2012 and uploaded by RSA Josephine Hill.", "Provided is a group communication method in a terminal, including: receiving session information and connection management server information; checking whether there is a connection terminal pre-connected to a session corresponding to the session information on own network; when there is the connection terminal at the check result, accessing to a media server that the pre-connected terminal accesses; when there is no connection terminal at the check result, receiving a media server list by accessing to the connection management server based on the connection management server information; selecting and accessing to a media server in the provided media server list; and performing group communication through the session object on the same session.", "Published November 1944. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog", "PLEASE NOTE: This item is currently unreadable in it's original format. To download the PDF, choose the .zip format. 2019-03-01", "Foreword Jeffrey Field 1. The National Endowment for the Humanities and the United States Newspaper Program Harold Cannon 2. Coordination of Cataloging Practices in the United States Newspaper Program Robert B. Harriman, Jr. 3. Challenges of On-Site Cataloging Rebecca A. Wilson and Lydia Suzanne Kellerman 4. Perspectives on the Pennsylvania Newspaper Project at the University of Pittsburgh Faye Leibowitz and Cathy Sorensen 5. The Newspaper Cataloging Manual and AACR2 Jim E. Cole 6. Rethinking National Policy for Cataloging Microform Reproductions Crystal Graham 7. Newspapers and Their Readers: The United States Newspaper Program's List of Intended Audience Terms James P. Danky 8. Cataloging News Walter M. High", "1931-1933, Index to Vol. 1; (Q-Z) pages 141, 145-150, 169-176, 211-216, 219, 223, 227-234, 245, 249", "Aims – To see if Orthopaedic Theatres at Leicester Royal Infirmary (LRI) are performing Daily Team Briefs? Methods – Prospective collection over one calendar month. Results – The hip list showed 84.2% compliance, the trauma list showed 60.5% compliance and the paediatric list showed 55.7%. Morning list compliance was 73.7% vs afternoon list compliance of 36.8%. Conclusions –", "The invention relates to a method of computationally efficient interference check for a path planning for a vehicle (2), wherein for each (x, y) pair In the method the following steps are performed: First, a determination of the relevant in an expansion step (x, y) pairs ((x Subsequently, a transforming all relevant (x, y) pairs This is followed by an interference check by comparing the transformed (x, y) pairs ((x Following is generated with the collision-free curve parameters from the first list and an expansion of the path (p Finally, it is checked whether a total cost optimized node a sought destination point (4) is the path planning.", "his daily running session), a reddish-colored urine reappeared. Our patient was advised to stop WBV training and to take fluid before and during exertion. He did not experience any episode of HT during a 1-year follow-up with periodic check-ups, in spite of the continuation of his sporting career. The concomitance of the two types of trauma – daily running and WBV – could have been critical in this case for producing HT. In particular, we think that platforms providing side-alternating vibration (such as the Galileo platform) may pose some health risks if the feet are positioned too far from the axis of rotation.", "No check-list of the British Oligochaeta has appeared since Southern (1909) and aa several families have been revised recently several changes of the nomenclature used in that work have been necessary. In addition some fifteen species of aquatic worms have been added to the British list from my own collections, and therefore brief descriptions of these species are added in a systematic section following the check-list. In that section also are details of some corrections to the nomenclature and two corrected identifications discovered subsequent to the publication of an initial list of the Tubscidae (Brinkhurst 1960). Dr B. M. Gerard has been kind enough to supply a list of the Lumbricidae (as they will appear in a revision of the Linnean Society Key to the family) which has enabled me to give a complete list of Oligochaeta rather than a list of the aquatic species under investigation in Liverpool.", "It indicates the average color bar 507 indicating the overall imaging period of images taken in time sequence by the capsule endoscope. Checking the check image pickup of the entire picked-up image an image display means (504B) displays a list on, and calculates whether each checked image corresponds to the one time of the image capture period, the average color bar (507 in the scale of the average color bar 507 ) onto the marks represented by the number corresponding to each checked image. As a result, at the same time that a better detection of the image picked up the body, a display image can easily confirm whether the image of any organ. The average color bar, the checked-image display field, the capsule housing, the image sensing unit, the cover portion, the receiver", "Chief Scientist: Homa Lee. Sampling data (CTDmeter, Lehighcore, boxcore, piezometer) of field activity W-2-98-NC in Eureka, California from 07/17/1998 to 07/24/1998, http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/infobank/w/w298nc/html/w-2-98-nc.meta.html.", "Revised April 1957. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog", "Abstract To predict the average power output of a wind turbine, a response model is proposed which takes into account: (i) the delayed response to the longitudinal wind speed fluctuations; (ii) a response function of the turbine with arbitrary frequency dependence; (iii) wind fields of arbitrary turbulence intensity. In the limit of low turbulence intensity, the dynamical ansatz as proposed in 1992 by Rosen and Sheinman is reproduced. It is shown, how the response function of the turbine can be obtained from simulation experiments of a specific wind turbine. For two idealized situations the dynamic effect of fluctuating wind is estimated at turbulence intensities 0⩽ I u ⩽0.5. At the special mean wind speed V=8 m/s , the turbine response function is determined from simulation data published by Sheinman and Rosen in 1992 and 1994.", "Published March 1933.Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog", "Chu and Ho's recent article in Artificial Life is riddled with errors. In particular, they use a wrong definition of Robert Rosen's mechanism. This renders their “critical assessment” of Rosen's central proof null and void.", "Letter from 1937; two pedigree charts for the Amundson and Neumiller families; ten copied images of the Milde, Neumiller, Amundson, and Munsch families, dating from 1895 to 1997; and a woolen Afghan, circa 1960s.", "The current research presents a general framework for assessing the subjective perception of situations. The framework was used to assess freely listed situations relevant to participants’ daily li...", "“‘…so begin always again and again’: Syntactical Spaces, Indebted Figures in the Work of Muntean/Rosenblum”. In eds Bovier, Roncero & Rubio, Muntean/Rosenblum: Make Death Listen, Zurich: JRP Ringier, pp. 92-93, and 131-133 (in Spanish and German, variant editions.). ::: ISBN: 3-905701-98-7, 3-905701-99-5 and 84-935132-1-0.", "A module over a finite-dimensional algebra is called a ‘diamond’ if it has a simple top and a simple socle.Using covering theory, the classification of all diamonds for algebras of finite representation type over algebraically closed fields can be reduced to representation-directed algebras. We prove a criterion referring to the positive roots of the corresponding Tits quadratic form, which makes it easy to check whether a representation-directed algebra has a faithful diamond. Using an implementation of this criterion in the CREP program system on representation theory, we are able to classify all exceptional representation-directed algebras having a faithful diamond. We obtain a list of 157 algebras up to isomorphism and duality. The 52 maximal members of this list are presented at the end of this paper.", "When choosing gifts for your dad, flowers generally do not essentially make part of the list. Check it:- http://delhigifts.strikingly.com/blog/8-graceful-flowers-to-mesmerize-your-daddy-on-this-father-s-day", "Reports of geomagnetic activity for the year 1947 have been received from a sufficient number of observatories so that the international quiet and disturbed days can be selected in accordance with the method outlined on pages 219–227 in the December, 1943, issue of this Journal, with the exception that the daily indices B based on the actual ranges of KA from seven American-operated observatories are no longer available and hence this criterion is lost. The selection is based on the reports of magnetic character on a scale of 0, 1, and 2 from an average of 31 observatories and of K-indices from an average of 26 observatories.", "The lists in this book will supplement those in the standard reference works. They have been compiled from 29 lists published in the Mineralogical Magazine from 1897 to 1976.", "The article purpose are to know the positive and negative of information system of finished product inventory on TUWBI company, to know the affectivity and efficiency of information system of finished product inventory on TUWBI company, and to evaluate the information system of finished product inventory on TUWBI company. The used methods are literature and field study in form of observation, interview, check list, and documentation. The result is there is positive and negative from the use of information system of finished product inventory. The conclusion is improvement is still needed to increase performance and guarantee on data and information protection of every threat", "1. Evaluation of the side effects of psychoactive drugs presents a special statistical situation because many of the symptoms of psychiatric disorders are also potential side effects. 2. Reported incidences of adverse events can be viewed as being a combination of psychoactive drug effects, disease state effects and other concomitant effects. 3. An intriguing statistical problem is to develop methodology to separate these effects. 4. This paper discussed four methodologies for estimating incidence of side effects assessed with a symptom and side effect check list.", "To make inorganic structure data more useful for further studies a five-point list of simple procedures to be followed by authors of crystal structure papers is proposed. 1. A crystal structure should be described with the space group corresponding to its true symmetry. 2. A new structure proposal should be tested, if it is realistic in principle. 3. A structure should be described with a space group in a setting given in the International Tables. 4. For a comparison with other structures the structure data should be standardized with the program STRUCTURE TIDY. 5. 揘ew?structure data should be checked in the databases, Chemical Abstracts or on-line internet resources, if they are really new. The list is supplemented with many explanations, commentaries, examples and references.", "We comment on a recently published criticism of our analysis of the paradox of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen." ]

[ "The event marked the 60th anniversary of the landing of the Granma yacht which brought the Castro brothers and their bearded rebels from Mexico to Cuba to start their revolution against a U.S.-backed dictatorship.\nTroops wielding automatic rifles marched in lock step behind a replica of the Granma on Monday, followed by a sea of banner- and flag-waving Cubans, many bussed in and organized through their workplaces and neighborhoods.\n\"This is an important message of unity and strength,\" said Rene Lazo, 66, who, like most, got up well before the crack of dawn to participate in the parade.\n\"This is going to be a difficult year but we will keep working hard to bring our people forwards\".\nCommunist-ruled Cuba fell into an economic recession in the second half of last year, its first since the collapse of the Soviet Union a quarter century ago, as its strategic ally Venezuela floundered.\nMeanwhile its historic detente with the United States came under threat with the election of Donald Trump as President. Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, has said he would unravel attempts to normalize relations unless he gets a “better deal\".\nAll this is taking place as Cuba is also coming to terms with the loss of its revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro. While \"El Comandante\" had handed the presidency over to his younger brother Raul in 2008, he remained a key figurehead.\nSome of those marching held up images of Castro or banners reading \"We are Fidel\". While the parade normally takes place every five years on Dec. 2, it was postponed a month due to his death in late November.\n\"He may not be present physically but he is in all our hearts,\" said Natalia Gonzales, who had painted \"I am Fidel\" on the foreheads of her three grandchildren.\nRaul Castro and his family watched and waved at those marching from the foot of the towering monument to independence hero Jose Marti in the center of the square.\nThe mood on Monday was of defiance although many Cubans said they hoped there would not be a return of Cold War-era politics.\n\"We are braced for conflict with the USA, we always have been,\" said 70-year-old Marcial Garcia. \"But I hope Trump will instead follow the path ... towards normalization.\"\nTrump's threat to gradual and still fragile detente could not come at a worse time for Cuba.\nA tourism boom in part sparked by looser travel restrictions on Americans failed last year to offset dwindling oil shipments from Venezuela and less cash for Cuban doctors and other professionals working overseas.\n\"Everything is just very uncertain at the moment, so there's more propaganda,\" said Antonio Sosa, 50, an engineer who chose not to attend the parade. \"You don't see news on the news broadcast anymore, just speeches Fidel gave 30 years ago.\"" ]

[ "A former Rockette is urging members of the dance troupe to put politics aside to perform at the inauguration of Donald Trump.\nPatty DeCarlo Grantham, a member of the troupe from 1959 to 1970, has spoken out after several current high kickers sparked controversy last week when they revealed they did not want to perform for the president-elect.\n'The only thing the Rockettes should be focused on is performing for our nation and helping unite us all with the joy, love, beauty and strength for which they are famous,' the retired member told the New York Post.\nA former Rockette is urging members of the dance troupe to put politics aside to perform at the inauguration of Donald Trump\n'Like the millions of people who are true Rockette fans, we cannot wait to see the Rockettes proudly 'strut their stuff' for the upcoming inauguration of the President of the United States of America.'\nAfter it was revealed the Rockettes would play the inauguration on January 20, dancer Phoebe Pearl had posted a tirade against the next president with a photo of her performing and a cartoon caption saying 'not my president.'\nThe New York City-based performer wrote on Instagram that she was 'embarrassed and disappointed' to appear at the event.\n'I usually don't use social media to make a political stand but I feel overwhelmed with emotion,' Pearl wrote. 'Finding out that it has been decided for us that Rockettes will be performing at the Presidential inauguration makes me feel embarrassed and disappointed.'\nPatty DeCarlo Grantham, (left) a member of the troupe from 1959 to 1970, has spoken out after several current high kickers sparked controversy last week when they revealed they did not want to perform for the president-elect (right, at his Mar-a-Lago estate, December 28)\nPearl said she felt uncomfortable about performing for Trump citing his history of unsavory language and assault allegations.\n'I am speaking for just myself but please know that after we found out this news, we have been performing with tears in our eyes and heavy hearts #notmypresident.'\nShe has since deleted the Instagram post.\nAn anonymous Rockette also told Marie Claire that the plans to play the inauguration had left her with tears streaming 'down her face through all 90 minutes of their world-famous 'Christmas Spectacular' on December 22.\nEx-Rockette Autumn Withers had also urged the troupe to boycott the inauguration, saying 'take a knee, ladies!' in a campaign which quickly gained celebrity backing.\nFormer Saturday Night Live alum Rachel Dratch joked: ' If #Rockettesare forced to perform at Inauguration they shouldn't wax,so kick line exposes overgrowth of full 1970's-style bushes.'\nAnd George Takei wrote: 'The members of the Rockettes and the Mormon Tabernacle are like all of us: Forced to go along with something horrible they didn't choose.'\nDancer Phoebe Pearl outlined her dissatisfaction of being drafted in to play at Trump's swearing in ceremony in a now-deleted Instagram post\n'We are all aware how contentious this election has been for our country,' Grantham wrote in an email to the Madison Square Garden Co., which owns Radio City.\n'I think its an opportunity for people who want to get publicity to get publicity,' she added, referring to those speaking out against the plans.\nGrantham, president of the 552-member Rockette Alumnae Association, told MSG owner that 'in no way does Ms. Withers' opinions reflect the opinion' of the Association, and sent a message to fellow members saying how proud they must be to see the Rockettes perform for the next president.\nMSG has said that participation in the inauguration is completely voluntary.\nThey added in a statement that all Rockettes need to sign up in order to be considered for an event and that there was already a wait list due to the number of women interested, so no one would be performing against their will.\nPhoebe Pearl is a dancer for the famous Radio City Rockettes\nThe Rockettes, who have performed at Radio City Music Hall since the 1930s, have previously appeared in Super Bowl halftime shows, Macy's Thanksgiving Day parades and George W. Bush's inaugurations in 2001 and 2005.\nThe dancers who choose to attend will join The Mormon Tabernacle Choir at the swearing-in ceremony. Members of the choir have also been split over the decision to perform.\nFormer choir member John Bonner, for one, said he was shocked and upset when he heard the news.\n'I expect the church to stand on their moral high ground,' Bonner told KUTV in Salt Lake City. An online petition calls on the group to re-consider.\nThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints acknowledged that the response to the announcement has been mixed, though church spokesman Eric Hawkins said in a statement that the appearance is a demonstration of support for the office rather than party affiliations or politics.\nLast month, Trump tweeted he only wants 'the people' at his swearing in, which is scheduled for January 20 in Washington D.C.\n'The so-called 'A' list celebrities are all wanting tixs (sic) to the inauguration, but look what they did for Hillary, NOTHING. I want the PEOPLE!' Trump tweeted.\nHowever it is reported a number of 'A-lost celebrities' have rejected Trump's invitations to perform at the prestigious ceremony.\nTrump, who hosted multiple seasons of the reality TV show, Celebrity Apprentice, sent off his tweet just hours after it was reported the Beach Boys had been approached about potentially performing at the inauguration.\nThe group was reportedly considering the offer and had not turned it down outright, according to the New York Post.\nThe newspaper cited a source close to the band, who claimed the members of the group were yet to make up their minds on whether they'd bust out some old classics at the event.\nUnlike the Beach Boys, diva Celine Dion said she would not perform at the Trump celebration, despite an intense lobbying effort from Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn.\nWynn had told the Donald he'd be able to deliver Dion, but the 48-year-old singer was forced to tell him to think twice.\nOthers to reject offers to take the stage at the internationally-broadcast event include famed opera singer Andrea Bocelli and rock legend Elton John.\nMSG have said that the Radio City Rockettes will not be forced to perform at Trump's inauguration\nThe famed rock band Kiss was confirmed not to be playing the event, Gene Simmons' wife Shannon Tweed told TMZ. Simmons added the band was slated to be on a European tour coinciding with Trump's swearing-in.\nThe Republican's inauguration has been a tough sell to people in the show business industry, as many of the acts who turned down the high-profile assignment did so out of not wanting to 'normalize' Trump's reign as president, a source told TheWrap.\nHollywood poured massive amounts of cash into loser Hillary Clinton's campaign.\nThe Mormon church announced on its website Thursday that the 360-member volunteer choir will sing at the ceremony on Jan. 20.\nThe group has performed at a handful of other presidential inaugurals, including those of presidents George HW Bush, George W Bush and Ronald Reagan.", "President Trump is expected to announce a rollback of his predecessor’s detente with Cuba during a visit Friday to Miami, likely to include a reimposition of U.S. travel restrictions to the communist island as well as a limiting of business interactions between American companies and entities controlled by the Cuban military.\nThe changes are expected to be in line with those sought by Cuba hard-liners on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Marco Rubio, an influential Florida Republican on the Senate intelligence committee whom Mr. Trump seeks to gain as an ally.\nAdministration officials declined to comment on whether Friday’s speech will be a culmination of a monthslong review of Cuba policy, which has been a subject of speculation since Mr. Trump’s advisers signaled in November that he would undo Mr. Obama’s detente unless the Cuban government moved swiftly to address human rights abuses and loosen restrictions on freedom of speech.\nSecretary of State Rex W. Tillerson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week that “Cuba has failed” to do that, and suggested impending policy changes will focus on restricting relationships between U.S. and Cuban businesses that “inadvertently or directly” support what “continues to be a very oppressive regime.”\nAnalysts say that could mean only minor adjustments to the openings put in place in 2014 by the Obama administration, which sought to thaw hostility that had persisted between Washington and Havana since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.\nBut the uncertainty has prompted warnings from some regional experts and pushback from groups seeking a full lift of the decades-old trade embargo. “Any rollback in U.S.-Cuba engagement would adversely affect the many U.S. businesses who have invested capital in building avenues for transactions with the island,” says Jason Marczak at the Atlantic Council in Washington.\n“Companies like Airbnb, Google and dozens more in the tech, tourism and agricultural industries have already invested millions,” Mr. Marczak said. “Their investments should not be jeopardized by outdated policies that have proven detrimental in the past.”\nOn Tuesday 55 Cuban female entrepreneurs sent a letter to Mr. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, seeking her support for U.S. travel and trade with Cuba, arguing such developments have empowered Cuban women and strengthened a nascent private sector.\n“There are hundreds of thousands of Cuban women working in the private sector,” the group wrote, according to a press release circulated by the Engage Cuba coalition, a U.S.-based group pushing to lift remaining elements of the embargo. “A setback in the relationship would bring with it the fall of many of our businesses and with this, the suffering of all those families that depend on them.”\nMichael Shifter, who heads the InterAmerican Dialogue in Washington, said a serious limiting of U.S. travel and business will not only undermine the growth of capitalist activity on the island, it “will strengthen Cuban government hard-liners at a time when Cuba desperately needs help and reforms.”\n“The hard-liners will tell the Cuban people, ‘We told you we shouldn’t trust the Americans. We tried to work with them, and this is what we get,’” Mr. Shifter said. “Trump is going to invoke human rights as his motivation for any changes to the policy,” he said. “This is ironic because human rights have so far not been a hallmark of his administration in other parts of the world, such as Turkey, Egypt, the Philippines and Russia.”\nMr. Trump also has a clear domestic political reason for restoring bare-knuckle pressure on Havana, Mr. Shifter added. The president, he said, wants to appease a clutch of Cuban-American Republican lawmakers, who were outraged by Mr. Obama’s detente but are still mulling whether to back Mr. Trump at a moment when his new administration is under fire on several fronts.\nMr. Rubio is chief among them. He and the president went toe to toe in last year’s Republican primaries, during which Mr. Trump referred to the Florida senator as “Little Marco.” The two appeared recently to be trying to mend fences, a development that could help Mr. Trump as the Senate intelligence committee continues to probe allegations of proximity between his 2016 campaign and Russia.\nMr. Rubio was among a handful of Republicans who had dinner at the White House last week, just days before he was seen to defend Mr. Trump during a committee hearing in which former FBI director James B. Comey insinuated that the president had engaged in an obstruction of justice by firing him over the bureau’s own Russia investigation.\n“Rubio is on the intel committee; he was a presidential candidate. If Trump delivers and rolls back Obama policy on Cuba, I think Rubio is going to defend him no matter what happens,” said Mr. Shifter. “And when you’re in some trouble, like I think Trump is, and it’s being investigated, it’s good to have friends in the Senate like Marco Rubio.”", "TOKYO Confidence among Japan's manufacturers climbed to the highest since the global financial crisis a decade ago, a Reuters survey showed, while March trade data showed 12 percent growth in exports - the biggest gain in over two years.\nJapan's economy has shown more signs of life in recent months thanks to pick-up in exports and factory output.\nBut, stubbornly weak private consumption has put a drag on growth, underscoring the challenge Prime Minister Shinzo Abe faces in pulling the world's third largest economy out of two decades of stagnation.\nThe monthly Reuters Tankan poll - which tracks the Bank of Japan's key Tankan - showed sentiment at manufacturers rose for an eighth month in April to its highest since 2007.\nThe sentiment index for manufacturers rose one point to 26 in the poll of 529 large and midsize firms, conducted between April 4-17 in which 261 responded.\n\"Rising sentiment despite the dollar's fall below 110 yen during the survey period underscores that underlying conditions are firm,\" said Yutaka Miura, a senior technical analyst at Mizuho Securities.\nBut Miura noted the yen's strength - it gained 3.5 percent against the dollar over the past month - was making manufacturers more cautious going forward as exports were becoming less competitive.\nAlthough the trade data showed Japan's surplus with the United States had narrowed, concerns about President Donald Trump's pledges to adopt more protectionist policies have also clouded the outlook for big Japanese exporters.\nAnd the Reuters survey showed the manufacturers' sentiment index was seen slipping to 20 in July.\n\"Uncertainty is mounting overseas, with emerging markets and resource-producing economies undershooting, while protectionism is on the rise - as seen in Britain's vote to exit the European Union and the results of the U.S. presidential election,\" a manager at a machinery maker wrote in the survey.\nUNEVEN RECOVERY\nThe government on Thursday also raised its assessment of business sentiment, the first upgrade in four months, while sticking to its overall assessment that the economy is recovering gradually though pockets of weakness remain.\nYasukawa Electric Corp said on Thursday its group operating profit fell 17.2 percent in the business year to March to 30.4 billion yen (217.43 million pounds), though the leading industrial-robot maker expects it to rebound 31.5 percent this fiscal year.\nThat, however, is based on an estimate of the dollar at 110 yen on average, so a further yen rise would erode profits.\nStill, the export growth in March easily beat market forecasts, led by increased shipments of car parts and steel, and the benefits were gradually spreading to domestic demand.\nThe Reuters Tankan showed confidence at service-sector firms hitting a three-month high at plus 28, up two points in April from March, led by wholesalers.\nAs with manufacturing, however, the outlook was less buoyant, with the index seen slipping back to 26 in the coming three months.\nOn Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence, attended an inaugural U.S.-Japan economic dialogue, put Tokyo on notice that Washington wants results \"in the near future\" from talks it hopes will open Japan's markets to U.S. goods.\n(Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; additional reporting by Izumi Nakagawa, Yoshiyuki Osada and Minami Funakoshi; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)", "President likely to announce a reset in US-Cuba relations, and young Cuban Americans say such a move would squander years of progress\nIt has been 60 years since Alexa Ferrer’s grandparents fell in love on Havana’s famous seafront esplanade, the Malecón – but only three weeks since the third-generation Cuban American was finally able to visit her family’s homeland and retrace their first romantic footsteps.\nTaking advantage of former president Barack Obama’s relaxation of a half-century of travel restrictions, Ferrer, a student from Miami, spent 10 days in Cuba fulfilling her childhood dream, in an emotionally charged journey across Cuba that until recently would have been unthinkable.\nOn Friday, however, if Donald Trump fulfils expectations by announcing a reversal of at least some of his predecessor’s conciliatory policies, the shutters could be coming down once more.\nCuba must end human rights violations to improve relations, US warns Read more\nTo Ferrer, in her fourth year of Latin American studies at the University of Florida, such a move would squander years of progress towards a normalisation of relations between the countries – and rob many Cubans on the island their chance to rise above poverty.\n“I realise this trip might no longer be possible for those like me, but it’s not about our selfish interest to travel, it’s more about the opportunity we’ve opened,” said Ferrer, 21, who visited in May on a trip organised by Discover Cuba, the travel wing of Roots of Hope, a Miami-based advocacy group linking young Cuban Americans with Cubans on the island.\n“I’d be heartbroken if I’m not allowed to travel – but I’d be way more heartbroken that someone who’s been operating a casa particular or paladar would be shut out of business,” she said, referring to the private bed-and-breakfasts and home restaurants which have flourished in recent years.\n“These people are the rich ones now on the island. Our tourism has created a middle class that has not existed the way it is now, with the people that own casas particulares, paladars, or operate a taxi realising this is the avenue to make money.\n“I’ve just met all these incredible Cubans that are seeing success in their lives for the first time. Imagine how nervous they are. They don’t deserve it.”\nTrump aides threaten hard line as Cuba steps into the unknown Read more\nThe White House has not yet released details of Trump’s “recalibration” of US policy towards Cuba, but the president is widely expected to fulfil a pledge made on a campaign visit to Miami in September to follow a harder line to put pressure on Havana over human rights. Florida’s Cuban American politicians, including senator Marco Rubio and congressman Mario Díaz-Balart, have worked with the administration to help shape the new direction.\nAs well as rolling back Obama’s relaxation of travel restrictions, which allowed American cruise ships and airlines to resume scheduled services to Cuba last year for the first time in more than 50 years, Trump is reported to also be considering moves to limit business opportunities for US companies.\nJohn Kavulich, president of the independent US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, warned that almost all US business in Cuba would be shut down if Trump imposed a ban on dealings with Gaesa, the economic wing of the country’s military government that controls 60% of the island’s economy, including state-owned hotels, restaurants, banks and gas stations.\nSuch a move would place existing or planned deals with several major American hotel chains in immediate jeopardy.\nTrump is expected to make his announcement at Little Havana’s Manuel Artime Theatre, a symbolically important venue named for the political leader of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion in which Cuban exiles attempted to overthrow Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.\nThe embassies in Havana and Washington DC that reopened in 2015 are expected to be unaffected by Trump’s policy shift but his tightening of the relationship and reinforcing of the 50-year US-Cuba trade embargo will please many among Miami’s hardline Cuban exile community who helped him win Florida – and consequently the White House – in November’s presidential election.\nVarious business and advocacy groups, however, including Human Rights Watch, remain opposed to any reining back. “The previous administration was right to reject a policy that hurt ordinary Cubans and did nothing to advance human rights,” said Daniel Wilkinson, HRW’s managing director for the America.\n“The fact that Obama’s approach hasn’t led to political reform in Cuba after just a few years isn’t reason to return to a policy that proved a costly failure over many decades.”\nFerrer, meanwhile, said she understands the position of the hardliners. “My grandfather trained for Bay of Pigs, his cousin served seven years as a political prisoner, and I come from a family where some members feel like they can’t go back,” she said.\n“But you also have people like me, the third generations who are going back, and the people on the island, so excited and loving, the most generous people I ever met.\n“People see what it’s like to have a middle class, to work for your money and become an entrepreneur. As soon as we build that wall back up it’s going to weaken the private sector and open up the space for the state to take control again.”", "CAIBARIEN, Cuba (AP) — Irma battered Cuba with deafening winds and relentless rain Saturday, while a second hurricane, Jose, threatened to lash already-reeling islands elsewhere in the Caribbean.\nCuban coastal cities were clobbered by high winds from Irma that upended trees, toppled utility poles and scattered debris across streets. Roads were blocked, and witnesses said a provincial museum near the eye of the storm was in ruins.\nThere were no immediate reports of casualties in Cuba in addition to the 22 dead left in Irma’s wake across the Caribbean, where the storm ravaged such lush resort islands as St. Martin, St. Barts, St. Thomas, Barbuda and Anguilla.\nMany of Irma’s victims fled their battered islands on ferries and fishing boats for fear Jose would destroy or drench anything Irma left untouched.\nOn the Dutch side of St. Martin, an island divided between French and Dutch control, an estimated 70 percent of the homes were destroyed by Irma, according to the Dutch government. Officials said Jose was forecast to dump more rain on the island’s buildings, many of which lost their roofs to Irma.\nSome islands received a last-minute reprieve from Jose as it passed by.\nThe U.S. National Hurricane Center downgraded a hurricane warning for Barbuda and Anguilla. A hurricane watch also was discontinued for nearby Antigua.\nAs of midday Saturday, Irma was 65 miles (100 kilometers) east of Varadero, on Cuba’s northern coast, with winds of 125 mph (205 kmh). Jose was 95 miles (155 kilometers) northeast of the Leeward Islands, with winds of 145 mph (230 kmh).\nAs Irma rolled in, Cuban soldiers went through coastal towns to force people to evacuate, taking people to shelters at government buildings and schools — and even caves.\nVideo images from northern and eastern Cuba showed uprooted utility poles and signs, many downed trees and extensive damage to roofs.\nEastern Cuba, home to the island’s poor, rural population and a major sugarcane-growing area, faces a difficult recovery, with its economy in tatters even before the storm because of years of neglect and lack of investment.\nCivil Defense official Gergorio Torres said authorities were trying to tally the extent of the damage, which appeared concentrated in banana-growing areas.\nLooting was reported on St. Martin. Curfews were imposed there and on St. Barts, and French and Dutch authorities announced plans to send hundreds more troops and police to keep order.\nIt was not immediately known whether U.S. President Donald Trump’s luxury property on St. Martin had been damaged.\nOn Anguilla, Vanessa Croft Thompson crammed into her home’s laundry room with her husband, her best friend and their children along with their cats and dogs, as Irma’s floodwaters swamped her house. The storm peeled off her roof, rained water inside, and sheared paint from her walls.\n“Our hurricane-proof door was bending in, it was warping … and the entire house was shaking like it was an earthquake,” she said.\nThompson, the head of the English department at Anguilla’s only high school, said: “I don’t even know something that’s not destroyed. There’s nothing here that hasn’t been ripped apart by Irma.”\n(© Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)", "Donald Trump touted a poll Monday that put him at a 50 per cent approval rating.\nBut the U.S. president had nothing to say about another one that showed him at 41 per cent.\nTrump tweeted Monday about a poll from Rasmussen Reports that showed 50 per cent of likely U.S. voters approved of his job performance.\nIt showed an equal percentage disapproving.\nTRUMP APPROVAL HITS 50%https://t.co/vjZkGTyQb9 — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 17, 2017\n“This is the first time the president’s overall approval rating has been back in the 50s in nearly a month,” Rasmussen Reports said.\n“Just after his inauguration, Trump’s job approval peaked at 59 per cent and remained in the 50s every day until early March. It’s gone as low as 42 per cent since then.”\nRasmussen collects its poll results through telephone surveys of 500 likely voters per night; they’re reported on a three-day rolling average basis.\nIt also polls randomly-selected participants from a “demographically diverse panel” using an online survey tool. It has a 2.5-per-cent margin of error.\nREAD MORE: Donald Trump’s approval rating hits its lowest mark since the inauguration\nIn the past, Rasmussen Reports founder Scott Rasmussen has been called a “polarizing pollster,” with Democrats saying in 2012 that he was biased in favour of the Republicans, The Washington Post reported.\nThe campaign of then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney, however, touted his numbers strongly.\nNate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight gives Rasmussen Reports a grade of C+, with a record of calling races correctly 79 per cent of the time.\nBut Rasmussen’s results also represented a strong divergence with polls reported by Gallup, which has a B-minus rating from FiveThirtyEight.\nGallup’s most recent results on April 15 show Trump holding an approval rating of 41 per cent and a disapproval rating of 53 per cent.\nThat represents an increase from the end of March, when Trump’s approval rating hit 35 per cent, the lowest it had been since his inauguration in January.\nREAD MORE: Donald Trump says ‘any negative polls are fake news’\nIn the past, Trump has shown that he’s very selective about the poll results he chooses to accept.\nIn February, he tweeted that “any negative polls are fake news,” pointing specifically at NBC, ABC and CNN polls that took place during the election.\nAny negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 6, 2017\nIt wasn’t clear which polls he was referring to.\nA CNN/ORC International poll, released one day earlier, showed 52 per cent of Americans being unhappy with his actions in office.\nThose results marked Trump’s highest disapproval rating at the time since polls began tracking them.", "Cuba is bracing itself for a potential shift in US policy, amid expectations that US president Donald Trump could unveil a new policy towards the island this week.\nThere are expectations that Mr Trump may announce new measures when he travels to Miami, Florida, where he is scheduled to deliver a speech on Friday.\nMr Trump met with Florida senator Marco Rubio, his former rival as Republican nominee for president, for dinner at the White House last week. Mr Rubio, a Cuban-American, has been a fierce opponent of former president Barack Obama’s Cuba policy which saw the reopening of diplomatic relations between the two countries for the first time in half a century.\nAmong the possibilities being mooted by the White House are the tightening of travel rules. While technically US citizens are not permitted to travel to Cuba for tourism purposes, they are permitted to visit relatives or for educational, cultural or business activities. Mr Trump may seek to tighten the rules to ensure that those travelling to the country are entitled to do so.\nSince the diplomatic breakthrough in December 2014, there has been a three-fold increase in US visitors to Cuba, delivering a huge financial boost to a country that is heavily dependent on tourism.\nMr Trump said during the presidential campaign that he would have negotiated a better deal with Cuba than Mr Obama, who became the first sitting US president to visit Cuba in more than 50 years when he visited in March last year.\nRights violations\nAddressing lawmakers in the Senate on Tuesday, secretary of state Rex Tillerson said the US must see an end to human rights violations in Cuba if it is to continue normalising relations. In comments that indicated the Trump administration’s toughening stance on the former cold war foe, Mr Tillerson told the senate foreign relations committee: “We think we have achieved very little in terms of changing the behaviour of the regime in Cuba ... and it has little incentive today to change that.”\nMeanwhile, Mr Trump’s defence secretary, James Mattis, told a senate committee on Wednesday that he had been given the authority by the president to determine troop levels in Afghanistan, as the United States continues to mull over sending more troops to the region.\nThe head of the Pentagon said that no decision had yet been made about sending more troops to try and turn the tide on the 16-year conflict. The chief commander in the region earlier this year said thousands more troops were needed to avoid stalemate. Approximately 8,400 US troops are stationed there alongside troops from other Nato countries.\nThe move by Mr Trump to delegate responsibility to his defence secretary is part of a broader trend that has seen the president give the Pentagon more authority.", "Donald Trump spent 18 months on the campaign trail promising to build a wall, ban Muslims, bring jobs back and fill up prisons with “bad dudes”.\nAccording to a new poll from Gallup, the majority of Americans think Mr Trump will fail to deliver on his manifesto.\nOnly 45 per cent believe that the President will carry out his pledges, down from 62 per cent in February.\nThe current number drops to 40 per cent of women.\nThe figures were obtained between 5 and 9 April, based on a random sample of 1,019 adults and the poll has a margin of error is 4 per cent.\nThe poll comes after the President failed to implement the Republican replacement for Obamacare, and he has been criticised for not doing enough on taxes and immigration.\n“The public is also less likely to see him as a “strong and decisive leader,” as someone who “can bring about the changes this country needs” or as “honest and trustworthy”,” the polling company stated.\nGallup figures were more positive in other areas. A total of 52 per cent believe Mr Trump is a “strong and decisive leader”.\nHowever, less than half of Americans think he cares about the needs of “people like you” or can manage the government effectively.\nJust 36 per cent believe he is honest and trustworthy.\nMr Trump has previously dismissed negative polls as “fake news”.\nThe controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued\n8 show all The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued\n1/8 Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images\n2/8 Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC Getty\n3/8 Trump and the Mexico wall People protest against US President Donald Trump's inauguration next to a fake wall with a Mexican national flag and a dummy representing him in Mexico City Getty Images\n4/8 Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border Getty Images\n5/8 Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House Getty Images\n6/8 Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images\n7/8 Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline US actress and political activist Jane Fonda attends a rally with opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York Getty Images\n8/8 Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. The Republican-led US Senate has launched their much-anticipated effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act by passing a budget blueprint which would allow them to begin rolling back the health care reforms Getty Images\n“Just heard Fake News CNN is doing polls again despite the fact that their election polls were a WAY OFF disaster. Much higher ratings at Fox,” Mr Trump wrote on Twitter.\nHe is keen to advertise other polls. On Monday he re-tweeted a story from a right-wing outlet which showed that he had 50 per cent voter approval, according to the latest Rasmussen Report.\nIt is the first time the Rasmussen poll has shown the President’s approval rating to be back in the 50s in almost a month.\nBut even that 17 April report showed only 30 per cent strongly approve of the President, while 39 per cent strongly disapprove.\nRecent actions include ordering 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian air base, leaving one airstrip untouched. The move was calculated to show Americans and international allies that he was taking action against Bashar al-Assad but it was also reportedly aimed at improving his low ratings. The missiles were dismissed by critics as an empty gesture.\nMr Trump has suffered record-low approval ratings compared to his predecessors since his Inauguration on 20 January.\nOn 29 March, it dropped to 35 per cent, found Gallup, an all-time low so early on in a President’s first term.", "© REUTERS/ Carlos Barria Majority of US Citizens Think Trump No Longer Lives Up to Promises - Poll\nIt's official, at least as far as the Rasmussen poll is concerned: the American nation has split exactly in half.\nRasmussen Reports' numbers show that Trump's approval rating has climbed up to 50 percent. Another poll, by Gallup, reflects that 45 percent of respondents believe Trump has lived up to his campaign promises.\nBut this middle-of-the-road status creates room for number manipulations of all kinds. For example, according to some reports, Trump currently suffers from the lowest approval rating of any of his predecessors in the Oval Office for the same term of nearly 100 days. But looking at Trump's ratings in detail, in comparison to those of his predecessors, a somewhat different story emerges. According to data provided by The American Presidency Project, the times when the US president enjoyed overwhelming approval are long gone. John F. Kennedy, who assumed the presidency in 1961, and his predecessor Dwight Eisenhower (1953-61), were the last to enjoy support above 70% in their first 100 days (83% and 73%, respectively).\nSince then, a mild approval of 55 to 65 percent has become the norm, with Bill Clinton hitting the lowest margin of 55 percent after his first 100 days. In fact, Clinton, Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter all saw a 3-percent drop in their inaugural approval ratings 100 days in.\nConsidering Trump's initial approval was only 45 percent — he's been the only US President elected in the last 60 years to have a rating below the 50 percent threshold on inauguration day — if he manages to meet his 100-day mark with a rating of 50 percent, Trump will have all rights to pat himself on the back for staying in line with both Bushes and Dwight Eisenhower, with their 5-percent gain, and even outrunning Richard Nixon, who only managed to win 3 percent of voters' hearts and minds in his first 100 days.\nTrump was eager to retweet Rasmussen's poll figures on Monday.\n​He still has a long way to go to outrun Ronald Reagan, with his huge approval gain of 17 percent — from 51 to 68 percent approval — in his first 100 days.\nIn 1981, the New York Times published a lengthy review of the Gipper's first 100 days, calling him a \"president determined to change the tides of history,\" and asking whether he had the strength to carry out the changes he ran upon.\nClearly, Trump is in a different position today, and has a host of internal political issues on his plate. But the same question, of whether he has what he takes to make good on his campaign promises, remains very much the same.", "The National Food Production Battle implemented under the guidance of President Maithripala Sirisena, will commence today (6th Oct.), With the aim of taking forward the national food production program, challenged by the climate changes, with a new strength continuously in a sustainable manner to revive the agricultural sector of the country.\nThe inauguration of this program will be marked by having the ‘National Wap Magul Ceremony’ under the patronage of President Maithripala Sirisena at 8.30 am near the Thibbotuwawa Tank, Kekirava, and it is expected to launch many program across the country while declaring 6th October to 12th October as the National Food Production week.\n6th October, the first day of Food Production Week campaign has been designated as the Farmers’ Day, and many programs, including the distribution of seed paddy to farmers, rehabilitation of 2,000 acres of coconut lands, launching of Mahaweli Agri Project plan for 2017 / 18, implementation of special programs for the development of home gardening, presentation of 2,500 title deeds to the Mahaweli farming community, tree planting programs, conducting seminars and training programs regarding new agri technology, distribution of equipment to promote the production of organic fertilizer, will be implemented throughout the country.\n7th October will be Students’ Day and the inauguration ceremony of this will be held at the Siyane National School, Gampaha under the patronage of Minister of Education. The Ministry of Education stated that under three categories: National food production, toxins free food production, prevention of food wastage, several programs will be implemented covering all the 10,353 schools of the country.\n8th October is the Livestock Day. The inauguration of this day will be held at the Genetic Resources Centre in Peradeniya. Many extensive national programs including dairy industry development projects will be implemented for the development of the livestock Field.\n9th October has been designated as the Entrepreneurs’ Day, and the inauguration ceremony of this Day will be held at the premises of the Talawila Church in the North Western Province and the Andaulpatha Village in Mahiyangana in Uva Province. A number of programs will be implemented across the country to encourage the primary industrialists and entrepreneurs.\n10th October is the Fisheries Day, and the Ministry of Fisheries stated that a special program will be implemented to release one million fish for breeding purposes.\nThe inauguration of this Day will be marked by opening of the Fish Breeding Center in Kallarawa, built at a cost of Rs 200 million. Especially implementation of programs to increase the fish consumption among the people in the Hill Country and the Estate sector, programs for the development of livelihood as well as for creation of employment opportunities will be accelerated.\n11th October is the Public Servants Day, and the inauguration ceremony in this regard will be held at the Auditorium of Sabaragamuwa Provincial Council and Ratnapura District Secretariat.\n12th October is named as Diyawara Day, and the main ceremonies in this regard will be held near the Muruthawela Tank and near Urusita veva in Embilipitiya.\nMeanwhile, the Ministry of Mahaweli Development has organized many programs to get the active participation of the Mahaweli community for this program.\nIn the Mahaweli zone, there are an estimated 150,000 irrigation lands and all those lands are expected to be used for this program in a proper manner.\n(Government News Portal)", "The Inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th American President has taken on a truly morbid tone as the performers for the Radio City Rockettes thought they were going to be forced to perform at Trump’s ceremony on January 20. As it so happens, the Rockettes found out just a few days before Christmas that they had been booked to perform at the Donald Trump inauguration ceremony and the news was enough to bring them to tears during a performance at their Christmas Spectacular, a world famous event. When Marie Claire caught up to one of the performers for the show, only cited as “Mary,” they got some insight into what it meant to them if they were forced to perform for Donald Trump. Mary, although she had not been in tears at the moment, was standing next to a female performer who had tears staining her face while she hit her marks during the performance, although clearly distraught. Donald Trump, your website user experience makes me sad — by @llessurnivek https://t.co/w2b1UFdfQa pic.twitter.com/1GjiNP86uw — Pixel Perfect HTML (@PixelPerfectHTM) December 23, 2016 Mary told them that they all felt as though they were going to be forced to perform for a “monster.” Mary, along with other performers with the Rockettes, expressed their sincere concern about being forced to stand next to Donald Trump in their costumes, which are somewhat provocative and some might say that it would cause a sexual predator to act out on his illness. “If I had to lose my job over this (refusing to perform for Donald Trump), I would,” Mary told Marie Claire. “It’s too important. And I think the rest of the performing arts community would happily stand behind me.” What Mary described about her fellow performers is that they are all distraught because they were afraid they were going to lose their jobs if they refused to perform. Since the interview with Mary has taken place though, the Radio City Rockettes management, Madison Square Garden Company, have come out with a statement and said that they would not force their performers to do something they did not want to do, thus giving them a free pass to opt-out of the performance at Donald Trump’s inauguration. “The Radio City Rockettes are proud to participate in the 58th Presidential Inaugural [of Donald Trump],” the statement said. “For a Rockette to be considered for an event, they must voluntarily sign up and are never told they have to perform at a particular event, including the inaugural. It is always their choice. In fact, for the coming inauguration, we had more Rockettes request to participate than we have slots available. We eagerly await the inaugural celebrations.” The statement seemed to have an ominous tone to it, like they were insinuating that their girls all wanted to perform at the show. But nevertheless, they excused any performers, such as Mary, from performing at the event should they not want to. “This is where it gets tricky,” Mary told Marie Claire. “Thirteen girls are full-time year-round Rockettes, and they sign a contract saying that aside from approved vacation time, they will be available to do any and all work. The rest of us are seasonally contracted: 80 dancers, two casts of 40 women each.” The Rockettes will be ‘forced’ to perform at Donald Trump’s inauguration, reports claim https://t.co/Avjr9mWs9C pic.twitter.com/F0s88q8sdc — The new US policy (@ThenewUSpolicy1) December 23, 2016 So according to Mary, the contract performers on the Rockettes show got an e-mail that basically excuses their absence from the Donald Trump inauguration, which simply asked what their availability was. But the full time performers got a very different e-mail that gave them the details of the Donald Trump Inauguration ceremony, but did not give them the option to opt-out of the show. It is unclear at this time if the statement released by Madison Square Garden Company is a blanket statement for all performers or if the full-time performers would be forced to play at the Inauguration of Donald Trump. [Featured Image by Drew Angerer/Getty Images]\nxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx", "HAVANA (Reuters) - The eldest son of late Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, committed suicide on Thursday aged 68 after being treated for months for depression, Cuban state-run media reported.\nThe nuclear scientist, also known as “Fidelito”, or Little Fidel, because of how much he looked like his father, had initially been hospitalized and then continued treatment as an outpatient.\n“Castro Diaz-Balart, who had been attended by a group of doctors for several months due to a state of profound depression, committed suicide this morning,” Cubadebate website said.\nFidelito, who had the highest public profile of all Castro’s children, was born in 1949 out of his brief marriage to Mirta Diaz-Balart before he went on to topple a U.S.-backed dictator and build a communist-run state on the doorstep of the United States during the Cold War.\nThrough his mother, Castro Diaz-Balart was the cousin of some of Castro’s most bitter enemies in the Cuban American exile community, U.S. Representative Mario Diaz-Balart and former U.S. congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart.\nHe was also the subject of a dramatic custody dispute between the two families as a child.\nCuba scholars say his mother took him with her to the United States when he was aged five after announcing she wanted a divorce from Castro, while he was imprisoned for an attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago.\nCastro was able to bring Fidelito back to Cuba after the 1959 revolution.\nA multilingual nuclear physicist who studied in the former Soviet Union, Castro Diaz-Balart was head of Cuba’s national nuclear programme from 1980 to 1992, and spearheaded the development of a nuclear plant on the Caribbean’s largest island until his father fired him.\nFILE PHOTO: Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, son of Cuba's President Fidel Castro, talks to Argentine human right activist and member of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo group Hebe de Bonafini during the inauguration of the International Book Fair in Havana February 8, 2007. REUTERS/Claudia Daut/File Photo\nCuba halted its plant plans that same year because of a lack of funding after the collapse of Cuba’s trade and aid ties with the ex-Soviet bloc and he largely disappeared from public view appearing at the occasional scientific conference or diplomatic event.\nFidelito had been working for his uncle President Raul Castro as a scientific counsellor to the Cuban Council of State and Vice-president of the Cuban Academy of Sciences at the time of his death.\nA former British ambassador to Cuba, Paul Hare, who lectures at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, said Castro Diaz-Balart had seemed “thoughtful, rather curious about the world beyond Cuba” at a dinner in Boston two years ago.\nSlideshow (3 Images)\n“But he seemed a bit weary about having to be a Castro, rather than himself,” Hare said.\nJonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, a Cuba expert at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, said Fidelito had provided him with invaluable help in the 1990s while he was writing a book on Cuba’s nuclear program.\nIn 2000 they met again at a conference in Moscow and Fidelito worked “the room full of international nonproliferation experts, diplomats and journalists with aplomb, speaking no less than four languages -Spanish, English, Russian and French.”\nBenjamin-Alvarado said he suspected Fidelito’s title as scientific advisor was largely ceremonial as his views on energy development were not incorporated into national policies.\n“He had written extensively on Cuba’s need for developing renewable energy resources,” Benjamin-Alvarado said. “And yet almost all efforts by the Cuban government were geared to maintaining the status quo of oil dependency.”\n“I imagine that was disappointing for him.”\nFidelito’s death came just over a year after that of his father on Nov. 25, 2016, aged 90.", "Just as the cloaking media fog created by the Obama administration has begun to fade, former president Barack Obama is reportedly planning his reemergence into the political arena.\nGood -- it seems to be perfect timing, as he has some explaining to do.\nSpecifically, the willfully hidden deficiencies and delusions of the Obama administration’s foreign policy are emerging as some of President Donald Trump’s most consequential and urgent problems.\nFor starters, circumstances with Cuba and North Korea are the result of Obama-era blunders and the suppression of truth. Happy to help their liberal icon who could do no wrong, much of the mainstream media was compliant in publishing Obama's spin. Now, the problems are reemerging and they are more dangerous and urgent than Obama and crew wanted us to believe.\nIt was discovered that in 2016, a possible “acoustic attack” targeted U.S. diplomatic staff in Havana. According to the Associated Press, American diplomats in Cuba have developed “severe hearing loss attributed to a covert sonic device.”\nSome have even been sent back to the United States.\nWhile it remains publicly unknown who planned and executed the possible attack, the fact is Obama and his administration withheld crucial information from the public.\nAnd it appears they did nothing in response to the apparent targeting of our own people.\nMeanwhile in North Korea, the Obama administration failed to prevent further progress from being made on the Kim Jong-un regime’s nuclear weapons program.\nCiting a recent confidential assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Washington Post reported last week that “North Korea has successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles, crossing a key threshold on the path to becoming a full-fledged nuclear power.”\nThis was known as far back as 2011. Yet the Obama administration suppressed the news and kept selling its policy of \"strategic patience.\" Turns out \"strategic patience\" in Asia was a lot like \"leading from behind\" in the Middle East.\nSpecifically, the United States did nothing, our problems festered and now a deadly crisis is at hand.\nAs troubling as these revelations are, they were typical.\nRemember, the Obama White House boasted about its ability to manipulate the media during its capitulation to Iran.\nAccording to the Post, “One of President Obama’s top national security advisers, [Ben Rhodes,] led journalists to believe a misleading timeline of U.S. negotiations with Iran over a nuclear agreement and relied on inexperienced reporters to create an 'echo chamber’ that helped sway public opinion to seal the deal.”\nThe deceptive ploy to hide the truth and sell the Iran deal was standard operating procedure.\nIt is important to reveal other realities that Trump has to deal with that were under-reported during Obama's presidency.\nIraq is a client state of Iran; Afghanistan is beyond the brink; Obama kept a zombie regime in place in Kabul that couldn't last a month without U.S. support, and most of the countryside is either under the control of the Taliban or local warlords of uncertain loyalty; anarchy reigns in Venezuela; and, southeast Asia thinks the U.S. has become unreliable or has departed altogether.\nThis is directly the result of Obama-era weakness and neglect.\nSay what you will about Trump, but none of these problems started on Inauguration Day in January.\nRogers is a political consultant and veteran of the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush White Houses.", "These Are The Celebrities That SHOT Trump Down And Why – Americans Now Responding\nI think it is the very height of disrespect and damned near unpatriotic to refuse to perform at a presidential inauguration. But a lot of A-lister Hollywood types have done just that. The Daily Caller has a list of eight of them. I’m very surprised that KISS is on that list… Gene Simmons must have been out-voted by his fellow rockers. As for the others, there are no surprises here. I think they all need to get over it and accept that Donald Trump is now their President. I think they will come to regret behaving like this.\nJackie Evancho, the Radio City Rockettes and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir will be there. Although there may not be a whole lot of celebrities there, Trump will have the military and police there, as well as other first responders. And he will have a section of the American people there supporting him all the way. Trump won’t miss the celebrity support and neither will his supporters. Those that count will be there and there’s a good chance Bibi Netanyahu will attend.\nFrom the Conservative Tribune:\nThere are plenty of celebrities who are willing to be patriotic, so long as the Democrats are in charge. When it’s the GOP, not so much. That’s why we’ve heard plenty about celebs who are boycotting performing at Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremonies. The GOP has been striking back, though, with NBC News reporting that Bristol Palin has gone as far as to call the biased celebs “sissies” in a blog post. Courtesy of The Daily Caller, here are eight celebs who have turned Trump down. Is your favorite celeb among them?\nCelebrities couldn’t get enough of Trump when he was just a regular ole’ billionaire running The Apprentice. But get elected as a Republican President and they shun you. Americans won’t forget this. Bristol Palin wrote a scorching post on Patheos calling these glory hounds out. “Isn’t it amazing how ‘not cool’ it is to be conservative in the public eye? Either Hollywood is that far off — or we have so many sissies we have in the spot light too scared to stand for what they believe in!” Palin wrote. I couldn’t agree more.\nI have not always agreed with Bristol and I still don’t like what she wrote on Ted Cruz, but she’s right on this point. These elitist snobs are going to rue the day they tried to show they were better than the President of the United States. That’s okay… I have a feeling Jackie Evancho is going to get a massive launch into fame over this and Donald Trump has a very long memory concerning those that are not loyal. That bill will eventually come due.", "US Defense Secretary James Mattis has warned NATO that America could “moderate” its commitment to the alliance if other member states fail to meet the requisite spending targets.\nMattis reaffirmed America’s support for NATO on Wednesday, describing the alliance as a “fundamental bedrock for the US and all the transatlantic community.”\nBut speaking in Brussels, where he met with defense ministers for the first time since being sworn in, Mattis also reiterated US President Donald Trump’s calls for fellow members to meet the requisite spending targets.\nOnly five of the 28 member states currently meet the alliance’s spending target of 2% of GDP. And while Mattis stated the US was committed to NATO, he did warn that Washington would not be shy in confronting those who are failing to pull their weight financially.\n“No longer can the American taxpayer carry a disproportionate share of the defense of western values,” Mattis told fellow defense ministers.\n“Americans cannot care more for your children’s security than you do. Disregard for military readiness demonstrates a lack of respect for ourselves, for the Alliance, and for the freedoms we inherited, which are now clearly threatened.”\nMattis urged fellow ministers to put forward a plan to ensure that NATO is not in the same situation this time next year, and urged on member states to make the 2% target contributions.\nHe warned that the support of the US government should not be taken for granted.\n“America will meet its responsibilities, but if your nations do not want to see America moderate its commitment to this alliance, each of your capitals needs to show support for our common defense.”\nRussia warning\nMattis also spoke of the need to negotiate with Russia “from a position of strength.”\n“While the United States and the alliance seek to engage Russia, we must at the same time defend ourselves if Russia chooses to act contrary to international law,” Mattis said.\n“Just as we did throughout the darkest days of the Cold War, the United States remains willing to keep open political channels of cooperation and deescalate tensions.\n“We remain open to opportunities to restore a cooperative relationship with Moscow, while being realistic in our expectations and ensuring our diplomats negotiate from a position of strength.”\nTrump’s take\nTrump labeled NATO “obsolete” during a January interview, but his stance has softened since then.\nEarlier this month, Trump vowed strong support for the alliance and committed to attending a meeting of NATO leaders in Europe in May after speaking to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.\nNATO also said that the two men “reconfirmed the importance of the alliance in troubled times.”\nThere had been consternation over Trump’s position on NATO during the campaign.\nHe was particularly critical of the 23 members of the alliance which are not meeting the recommended defense spending levels of 2% of GDP.\nOf NATO’s 28 members, just the US, Greece, Poland, Estonia and the UK met the target.\nDuring a joint interview with the Times of London and the German publication Bild ahead of the inauguration, Trump made plain his fears over the transatlantic alliance.\n“I said a long time ago that NATO had problems,” he said.\n“Number one, it was obsolete, because it was designed many, many years ago.\n“Number two, the countries weren’t paying what they’re supposed to be paying,” adding that this was to the detriment of the US.\nBut speaking earlier this month at the headquarters of US Central Command in Florida, Trump was more positive.\n“We strongly support NATO,” he said.\n“We only ask that all of the NATO members make their full and proper financial contributions to the NATO alliance, which many of them have not been doing. Many of them have not been even close. And they have to do that.”\nPence visit\nUS Vice President Mike Pence is set to meet with Stoltenberg in Brussels on February 20, when they are expected to discuss the ongoing partnership and Trump’s stance on spending.\nSpeaking alongside Mattis, Stoltenberg said the US “has been clear that we need more defense spending, and fairer burden-sharing.”\nHe cited figures which showed that defense spending among European allies and Canada had gone up by 3.8% in real terms in 2016, which he says is approximately $10 billion.\n“This is significant, but it is not enough,” he said. “We have to continue to increase defense spending across Europe and Canada. So, we need to keep the momentum.”", "Chelsea Clinton has defended Donald Trump’s children amid calls for the President’s offspring to stop receiving Secret Service protection.\nPresident Trump has drawn mounting criticism in recent weeks for the combined cost of protecting himself and his immediate family. Critics have argued the taxpayer should not be bankrolling the cost of secret service protection.\nThe former first daughter, who is the only child of Hillary and Bill Clinton, weighed in on the furore and argued the President’s family’s security and safety should never be politicised.\nMs Clinton said: “It makes me very sad to read this and to know that anyone would ever say this. The President's family's protection should not be politicised.”\nShe was responding to a tweet by US journalist Yashar Ali which said: “Some say Trump kids shouldn’t have Secret Service. Do you not care about national security crisis that would arise if one of them was kidnapped or hurt?”\nMs Clinton also defended the youngest of the Trump Children, Barron who is just 11 years old, after he was subject to a torrent of memes mocking his facial expressions and accusing him of looking bored on inauguration day.\nThe controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued\n8 show all The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued\n1/8 Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images\n2/8 Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC Getty\n3/8 Trump and the Mexico wall People protest against US President Donald Trump's inauguration next to a fake wall with a Mexican national flag and a dummy representing him in Mexico City Getty Images\n4/8 Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border Getty Images\n5/8 Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House Getty Images\n6/8 Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images\n7/8 Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline US actress and political activist Jane Fonda attends a rally with opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York Getty Images\n8/8 Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. The Republican-led US Senate has launched their much-anticipated effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act by passing a budget blueprint which would allow them to begin rolling back the health care reforms Getty Images\nMr Trump has come under fire for the exorbitant cost of protecting members of his close family – including his adult children, Donald Jr, Eric, Ivanka and Tiffany, and Barron, who lives in a three-floor penthouse in Trump Tower in New York with his mother and First Lady Melania Trump.\nIt costs between $127,000 and $146,000 a day of taxpayers’ money “to protect the First Lady and her son while they reside in Trump Tower,” according to an NYPD letter sent to members of the New York delegation to Congress.\nMr Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka, has also sparked outrage for the cost of her secret service costs. Ivanka, her husband Jared Kushner, their children and the President’s other son Eric reportedly required 100 Secret Service agents to travel with the group for their recent spring break skiing holiday in Colorado. The US Secret Service is reported to have spent $12,208 on rental ski equipment and clothing at the Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club.\nCritics have frequently raised alarm bells about why the taxpayer is picking up the bill for the complicated lifestyle of the Trump family. “Why are Trump's grown children getting taxpayer-funded limousines while doing business overseas? Why do they get Secret Service protection?” asked one person on Twitter.\nHey taxpayers! Trump sons are spending hundreds of thousands of YOUR money on Trump business travel. WEEKLY. https://t.co/Up7M0BhZhI — Nathaniel Spuewell (@natespuewell) April 16, 2017\nOn top of this, the US Secret Service are reported to have requested $60 million in additional funding for next year.\nNearly half of the additional money, $26.8 million, would pay to protect Mr Trump’s family and private home in New York’s Trump Tower, documents seen by Washington Post show, while $33 million would be spent on travel costs incurred by “the president, vice president and other visiting heads of state.”", "A group of pro-Trump Californians protested outside the Haste Muerte café (which means “Until Death” in Spanish) in East Oakland for refusing to serve a uniformed police officer last month.\n“This is Trump country,” the protesters chanted, according to the East Bay Times. They also chanted, “Blue lives matter.” Supporters of the cafe reportedly showed up to the rally with signs and chanting, “Let’s go, Oakland!”\nSome of the pro-Trump protesters who came out in support of Oakland Police Department Sgt. Robert Trevino, who is Latino, carried American flags and wore flag-themed clothing.\nHappening now: pro-Trump demonstrators outside #HastaMuerte cafe in #Fruitvale #Oakland after the shop declined to serve a uniformed officer pic.twitter.com/XIzTyjErYw — Erin Baldassari (@e_baldi) March 18, 2018\nOn February 16, Sgt. Trevino was refused a cup of coffee by the workers at the cafe due to “a policy of asking police to leave for the physical and emotional safety of our customers and ourselves.”\nOn its Instagram page, the cafe wrote its own account of why it refused to serve the Latino police officer:\nLast Friday, February 16th a police (OPD) entered our shop and was told by one of our worker-owners that “we have a policy of asking police to leave for the physical and emotional safety of our customers and ourselves.” Since then, cop supporters are trying to publicly shame us online with low reviews because this particular police visitor was Latino. He broadcasted to his network that he was “refused service” at a local business and now the rumblings are spreading.\nThe post also featured a crossed-out Oakland police seal and badge in pink with the Spanish words “Habla con tu vecinxs no con la policia,” which translates to, “Speak with your neighbors, not the police.”\nThe coffee shop also supports convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur (JoAnne Chesimard), who escaped from a New Jersey prison and fled to Cuba after being convicted of the murder of police officer Werner Foerster in 1973. The Women’s March supports Shakur, and the felon has even received support from Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), who is being challenged by conservative Latino Omar Navarro (R) in California’s 43rd congressional district..\nIn an email sent to Breitbart News on Monday, one of the pro-Trump supporters present at the rally, Ashton Whitty, said that the anti-cop counter-protesters, ironically, threatened to call the cops on the pro-police protesters.\n“After five minutes of standing outside the coffee shop, a man comes out and threatens to call the cops,” Whitty wrote in the email to Breitbart News.\nShe continued:\nBasically he threatened to call the cops because we were peacefully protesting a coffee shop that hates cops. This coffee shop also has a picture of Assata Shakur, the famous cop killer, who escaped prison and fled for Cuba where she was protected by Fidel Castro. Funny, how the coffee shop supports a FBI wanted terrorist but not police officers who serve and protect. Shortly after this man threatened to call the police, a man stops his truck in the middle of the street and walks up to us, threatening us. He’s saying “there’s going to be consequences” as his friend is putting on black gloves and wielding a bat. Next thing you know a third guy shows up ripping down flags and attacks someone with a flag. Someone on the flag side tries to defend him with pepper spray, but someone from Antifa then pepper sprays all of them and also pepper sprays me. All while we’re getting pepper sprayed one guy is hit with a bat. Someone was also tazed as you can hear in my video. When the police show up, people start calling us nazis despite the fact they attacked us for peacefully protesting.\nThe cafe also featured a picture of a Trump hat, designed in the classic “Make America Great Again” style, but in blue, which reads instead: “Make Racists Afraid Again.”\nAccording to the East Bay Times, approximately a dozen of the pro-Trump protesters left the cafe and showed up at the Temescal farmers market on the 5300 block of Claremont Avenue and confronted Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf during her “mobile mayor” gathering.\nSchaaf has been accused of obstructing justice for informing her constituents of a raid by officials with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last month.\nAdelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.", "(CNN) US Defense Secretary James Mattis has warned NATO that America could \"moderate\" its commitment to the alliance if other member states fail to meet the requisite spending targets.\nMattis reaffirmed America's support for NATO on Wednesday, describing the alliance as a \"fundamental bedrock for the US and all the transatlantic community.\"\nBut speaking in Brussels, where he met with defense ministers for the first time since being sworn in, Mattis also reiterated US President Donald Trump's calls for fellow members to meet the requisite spending targets.\nOnly five of the 28 member states currently meet the alliance's spending target of 2% of GDP. And while Mattis stated the US was committed to NATO, he did warn that Washington would not be shy in confronting those who are failing to pull their weight financially.\nJames Mattis (L) speaks with members of his delegation prior to a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels.\n\"No longer can the American taxpayer carry a disproportionate share of the defense of western values,\" Mattis told fellow defense ministers.\n\"Americans cannot care more for your children's security than you do. Disregard for military readiness demonstrates a lack of respect for ourselves, for the Alliance, and for the freedoms we inherited, which are now clearly threatened.\"\nMattis urged fellow ministers to put forward a plan to ensure that NATO is not in the same situation this time next year, and urged on member states to make the 2% target contributions.\nHe warned that the support of the US government should not be taken for granted.\n\"America will meet its responsibilities, but if your nations do not want to see America moderate its commitment to this alliance, each of your capitals needs to show support for our common defense.\"\nRussia warning\nMattis also spoke of the need to negotiate with Russia \"from a position of strength.\"\n\"While the United States and the alliance seek to engage Russia, we must at the same time defend ourselves if Russia chooses to act contrary to international law,\" Mattis said.\n\"Just as we did throughout the darkest days of the Cold War, the United States remains willing to keep open political channels of cooperation and deescalate tensions.\n\"We remain open to opportunities to restore a cooperative relationship with Moscow, while being realistic in our expectations and ensuring our diplomats negotiate from a position of strength.\"\nTrump's take\nEarlier this month, Trump vowed strong support for the alliance and committed to attending a meeting of NATO leaders in Europe in May after speaking to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.\nNATO also said that the two men \"reconfirmed the importance of the alliance in troubled times.\"\nThere had been consternation over Trump's position on NATO during the campaign.\nHe was particularly critical of the 23 members of the alliance which are not meeting the recommended defense spending levels of 2% of GDP.\nOf NATO's 28 members, just the US, Greece, Poland, Estonia and the UK met the target.\nDuring a joint interview with the Times of London and the German publication Bild ahead of the inauguration, Trump made plain his fears over the transatlantic alliance.\n\"I said a long time ago that NATO had problems,\" he said.\n\"Number one, it was obsolete, because it was designed many, many years ago.\n\"Number two, the countries weren't paying what they're supposed to be paying,\" adding that this was to the detriment of the US.\nBut speaking earlier this month at the headquarters of US Central Command in Florida, Trump was more positive.\n\"We only ask that all of the NATO members make their full and proper financial contributions to the NATO alliance, which many of them have not been doing. Many of them have not been even close. And they have to do that.\"\nPence visit\nUS Vice President Mike Pence is set to meet with Stoltenberg in Brussels on February 20, when they are expected to discuss the ongoing partnership and Trump's stance on spending.\nSpeaking alongside Mattis, Stoltenberg said the US \"has been clear that we need more defense spending, and fairer burden-sharing.\"\nHe cited figures which showed that defense spending among European allies and Canada had gone up by 3.8% in real terms in 2016, which he says is approximately $10 billion.\n\"This is significant, but it is not enough,\" he said. \"We have to continue to increase defense spending across Europe and Canada. So, we need to keep the momentum.\"", "WASHINGTON -- A congressman from northeast Arkansas will reintroduce legislation to ease trade restrictions with Cuba, and says he's hopeful that barriers to agricultural sales will be addressed early in 2017.\nBut there's plenty of uncertainty after the Nov. 8 presidential election and the Nov. 25 death of Fidel Castro, the 90-year-old former Cuban president.\nIt's unclear whether President-elect Donald Trump would be willing to support the bill, which is sponsored by U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, a Republican from Jonesboro.\nThe federal government currently bars farmers from extending credit to Cuban purchasers. As a result, Cubans must provide \"cash in advance\" whenever they purchase U.S. agricultural products. Crawford's legislation would allow credit to be extended, a change favored by many of the state's farm groups.\n[INTERACTIVE: Cuba-U.S. relations]\nNATIONAL\nH.R. 3687, the Cuba Agricultural Exports Act, also would have allowed Americans to invest in Cuban agricultural businesses that are not controlled by the government there.\nArkansas produces roughly half of the nation's rice. The state, along with Georgia, Alabama and North Carolina, also is one of the largest poultry producers.\nChicken and rice are dietary staples in Cuba, population 11.3 million, and Natural State farmers are eager to do business there.\nCrawford's bill had 48 co-sponsors, including U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman, a Hot Springs Republican. But it encountered fierce opposition, particularly from the Cuban-American community.\n\"There were a whole lot of folks that just wanted to make sure Fidel Castro was dead before they considered anything,\" Crawford said.\nNow that the Cuban revolutionary leader is gone, it may be easier for the legislation to advance, he said.\n\"We're not trying to do anything that would empower the regime,\" Crawford said.\nBut America shouldn't surrender the Cuban market to communist competitors from China and elsewhere, Crawford said.\n\"We can play a positive role there, fill that void, give them a cheaper, safer more readily available food supply or we can continue to view this through the lens of the Cold War and allow them to continue down that communist road that doesn't work for anybody,\" he said.\nBefore the rise of Castro, the U.S. was a major supplier of rice to Cuba. But the trade ended with the implementation of an economic embargo by the United States in the early 1960s.\nRestrictions on the sale of certain agricultural products were eased during the Clinton administration and by 2004 U.S. rice sales reached $64 million. The exports ended, however, after the U.S. government barred farmers from extending credit to Cuban purchasers.\nOver the past two years, President Barack Obama has taken steps to normalize relations between the United States and its communist neighbor, opening an embassy in Havana, adding daily flights, removing barriers to travel and allowing increased imports of Cuban cigars and rum.\nThe prohibition on agriculture credit, however, remains.\nDespite the thaw, critics say the Cuban regime has done little to improve human rights or to allow political dissent.\nCastro's demise hasn't altered conditions on the island, they say.\n\"Fidel Castro may be dead, but the regime is still well alive,\" said U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, a Republican from Rogers who has opposed the farm credit legislation. \"I've got some very serious concerns about what we do that serves to funnel more money into the hands of what I believe is a very corrupt ... and oppressive regime.\"\nU.S. Rep. French Hill said there's no evidence that Cuba is embracing free enterprise or freedom of speech, assembly and religion now that Castro's brother, Raul Castro, is at the helm.\nIn fact, conditions may be worsening, he said.\n\"We clearly want our farm goods to get to Cuba. It's a small but close market to us,\" the Little Rock Republican said. \"But the conditions have to be right for that to happen in Cuba.\"\nTrump has also been critical of efforts to normalize relations with Cuba and is threatening to reverse course once he takes office.\n\"If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate the deal,\" Trump tweeted in late November.\nWesterman isn't sure what to expect once the new administration arrives.\n\"I don't know how willing the Trump administration will be to deal with Cuba on trade,\" he said. \"The fact that Fidel Castro's dead now, I think makes it a little more palatable, but I haven't seen them make any big changes in the government down there yet. Maybe trade is a way to spur those changes on.\"\nWesterman said he continues to support efforts to facilitate the sale of farm products.\n\"I hate to use food as a negotiating tool anywhere. I think that's been a foreign policy mistake in the past. When we had the grain embargo with Russia, the only people that were hurt out of that were American farmers,\" he said.\nU.S. Sen. John Boozman, who has co-sponsored legislation to ease trade restrictions with Cuba, said he remains hopeful that barriers to agricultural sales can be removed in 2017.\n\"We've heard some rhetoric, but we don't really know how\" the Trump administration will react to Cuba, Boozman said.\nThe Rogers Republican said the U.S. should have consistent trade policies, noting that the U.S. trades freely with most other non-Democratic regimes.\n\"We trade with Saudi Arabia, we trade with Vietnam. We trade with everybody, I think probably, except for the North Koreans, so there's no reason that we shouldn't start moving in that direction,\" he said.\nImproved trade relations with Cuba \"would be good for America, good for Arkansas,\" he added.\nGov. Asa Hutchinson favors allowing farmers to extend credit to Cuban buyers, but says legislation allowing the change may be \"on a slower path over the next six months than the trajectory we were on before.\"\n\"The death of Fidel Castro significantly changed the environment. ... The United States, in my judgment, is waiting for a signal of greater openness and a willingness to change,\" he said.\nIf that message is transmitted, trade between the countries will likely accelerate, he added.\nMembers of the Engage Cuba Coalition's Arkansas State Council, which promotes U.S-Cuba trade, are hopeful closer ties will develop.\nBen Noble, executive director of the Arkansas Rice Federation, said access to the Cuban market will be a priority in 2017.\n\"If ever there was a time for full engagement with Cuba, it is today,\" he said.\nAnother member, Newport farmer Derek Haigwood, agrees.\n\"I do grow rice, and, oh, it would just be a wonderful thing if we could open up that market,\" he said.\nIf Arkansas farmers make inroads in Cuba, \"it's just something that would lift this economy up,\" he added.\nA Section on 01/02/2017", "An ally of former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is convinced that high-level officials at a U.S. government media arm are in league with the Castro regime in Cuba and he’s trying to convince federal authorities to investigate.\nJeffrey Scott Shapiro, a senior adviser to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), has for months promoted conspiracy theories involving BBG’s Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) and its recently departed director, Maria “Malule” Gonzalez. Specifically, Shapiro has told the FBI, internal BBG security, and colleagues at the U.S. broadcasting agency that he believes Gonzalez is secretly in league with Cuba’s communist government, according to three sources privy to the conversations.\nOfficials at the BBG have mostly dismissed the allegations, sources there say. But Shapiro has friends in high places. The White House placed Shapiro, a former writer at Bannon’s Breitbart News, at a senior position in the BBG. And Shapiro has told colleagues that he sees his mission at the agency as advancing and preserving Bannon’s “legacy.”\nShapiro did not respond to questions about his allegations and the evidence behind them. How he became convinced that Gonzalez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, was a secret agent for Castro is not entirely clear. Sources who spoke to The Daily Beast attributed it to a disposition towards Breitbart-esque conspiracy theories and a whisper campaign among politically active members of the Cuban exile community who oppose the recent moderation in tone of the OCB’s broadcasts.\nThe BBG was formed in the 1990s to oversee various U.S. government broadcasters, most notably Voice of America. The OCB, based in Miami, was designed to broadcast Spanish-language radio and television programs onto the island for the purposes of promoting American interests in Cuba. Under Gonzalez’s leadership, and in conjunction with an opening of U.S. relations towards Cuba, OCB shifted more towards a model that prioritized objective journalism.\nThe shift has irked some within OCB and the Cuban exile community who saw the agency and its Cuban radio broadcasts as offensive information tools against the repressive Castro regime, and blamed Gonzalez, an Obama administration holdover, for advancing the former president’s efforts to ease relations with a regime to which that many Cuban-Americans remain deeply hostile.\nSources familiar with Shapiro’s work at BBG said the shift infuriated him.\nAt a late summer BBG meeting, where agency officials discussed how to market its mission to congressional appropriators, Shapiro insisted that OCB’s role was to advance U.S. geopolitical goals—and in particular the specific policies of the Trump administration.\n“Our job is not to report the news. Our job is to promote US interests, to support the president’s agenda,” Shapiro said, according to a former senior government official familiar with internal BBG deliberations.\n“THERE WAS A SHIFT”\nShapiro joined the BBG in July. A source with knowledge of the situation told The Daily Beast that he was placed there at the direction of the White House’s Office of Presidential Personnel, which was sure to mention to BBG officials that Shapiro and Bannon were friends.\nSources described Shapiro as friendly during his early tenure at the agency. He did not demonstrate a particular familiarity with Cuba policy, a source said. He was eager to learn about the island nation, but seemed more concerned with military matters than issues directly pertinent to OCB’s mission, one source said.\nGet The Beast In Your Inbox! Daily Digest Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast. Cheat Sheet A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't). By clicking “Subscribe,” you agree to have read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Subscribe Thank You! You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason.\n“It really started to turn after Bannon resigned” in mid-August, recalled the former senior official. “There was a shift, it seemed, and then he started becoming more hostile towards Malule [Gonzalez], and becoming more political in his outreach internally to old guard OCB staff.”\nShapiro didn’t just disagree with OCB’s turn towards straight reporting, he became convinced that Gonzalez was operating at the behest of Cuba’s ruling communist party. “He went off the rails and started saying she was working for the Cuban government,” one source recalled. ”He started telling everyone who would listen about that.”\nAmong those he said this to were BBG’s internal security service who dutifully opened a probe into Gonzalez’s supposed Castro ties, according to sources. Those sources described the investigation as perfunctory—security officials are obligated to explore such allegations brought to them by high-level BBG officials—and stressed they’d seen no evidence to support the allegations.\nGonzalez’s security clearance was high enough that any potential red flags would have prevented her from rising to the senior position she occupied from 2015 until just last month. She did not return a request for comment but a source confirmed that she resigned from the BBG for health reasons and not because of internal pressures.\nThose pressures were intense though. According to both sources, Shapiro brought his allegations against Gonzalez to the FBI’s Miami field office. It was not immediately clear whether they pursued the allegations.\nThroughout his campaign to expose Cuban “infiltration” of OCB, Shapiro claimed to be in frequent contact with Bannon. One source said that he would often show colleagues text conversations between him and Bannon, which the source interpreted as attempts to demonstrate his connections in the administration.\n“He was always name dropping, especially dropping Bannon’s name,” that source said.\n“He was constantly saying he was talking to Bannon about this or that,” another source recalled. “My job is to make [OCB] a legacy for Bannon,” that source recalled Shapiro saying. “We have to make this what he would’ve wanted.”\nNeither Bannon nor a spokesperson responded to requests for comment on this story.\nLOYAL SOLDIERS\nYears prior to coming to the BBG, Shapiro had been a minor figure at Breitbart and in Bannon-world. He left his job reporting for Breitbart News in 2012 shortly after Andrew Breitbart’s sudden death, and right around the time Bannon began consolidating near-absolute power at the hard-right media outlet. Bannon’s colleagues, past and present, recall seeing Shapiro come in and out of the “Breitbart Embassy”—Bannon’s Washington, DC, hub of operations on Capitol Hill—over the years for work and various events. But they never saw him as a key player in Bannon’s media or political apparatus.\nStill, Shapiro considers himself a trusted Bannon ally and supporter. When Bannon came under fire late last year for alleged ties to anti-Semitism, racism, and white supremacy, Shapiro leapt to his defense.\n“As a Jewish American who worked with Bannon at Breitbart News, I am certain these characterizations are false,” Shapiro wrote, in an op-ed published by the Los Angeles Times in March, shortly after Bannon became Trump’s White House chief strategist. “They are the leading edge of a distortion campaign that mislabels Bannon as virulently prejudiced, anti-immigrant and a cultural fascist.”\nIn November 2016, Shapiro wrote at The Washington Times, a piece titled, “The tarring of Steve Bannon,” that “Bannon made sure I left [Breitbart] with dignity in a fashion that was equitable and fair, and often told me he appreciated my abilities as a journalist and a lawyer.”\nBetween Shapiro’s departure from Breitbart and his hiring at BBG, his attitude towards journalism appears to have changed. In his Times column, Shapiro wrote, “I was personally disappointed about the editorial direction Breitbart News had gone [under Bannon]. As a mainstream news journalist, I felt there was too much hardline opinion that carried an angry tone.”\nBut at BBG, sources say, Shapiro promoted a vision for its Cuba division that prioritized propaganda over news reporting. He wasn’t alone with these concerns. A number of BBG veterans shared the criticism of the direction Gonzalez had taken as Cuba-U.S. relations began to thaw. The agency has defended that shift as an effective method for promoting the value of news reporting as well as liberal democratic values in general in a nation that U.S. policymakers hope will turn away from its authoritarian political model.\nShapiro took his suspicion of OCB’s change in tone and doused it in the fuel of Breitbart-esque conspiracy, sources say.\n“His personality bent towards this kind of narrative. I think he’s naturally a paranoid guy,” one source said. BBG “put him in a place that was going to magnify that.”\nCiting Breitbart’s chief funders, the source added, “BBG’s a goddamn mess of an institution, but it does not deserve to be turned into what the Mercers and Bannon want to do. That is really scary.”", "In an apparent attempt to raise the stakes for North Korea, US Vice President Mike Pence warned Pyongyang on Monday against \"testing\" the resolve of US President Donald Trump.\n\"Just in the past two weeks, the world witnessed the strength and resolve of our new president in actions taken in Syria and Afghanistan. North Korea would do well not to test his resolve or the strength of the armed forces of the United States in this region,\" Pence said in a joint appearance with South Korean acting president Hwang.\nEarlier in the day Pence highlighted that \"the era of strategic patience [toward North Korea] is over.\"\nThe statement came in response to Pyongyang's failed missile launch on Sunday.\nFor its part, Moscow urged all sides to show restraint, avoid provocations and coordinate common efforts to settle the issue of North Korea's nuclear weapons program.\n\"We consistently urge all parties to show restraint in this situation, we call on everyone to avoid any actions that could be regarded as provocation,\" Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists Monday.\nSpeaking to Radio Sputnik, Georgiy Toloray, the head of Korean studies at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, expressed his confidence that Pence's tough stance \"is mere rhetoric.\"\n\"The 'era of strategic patience' was announced by [former] President Barack Obama,\" Toloray recalled, \"the US waited patiently for the North Korean regime to disintegrate by itself, trying to facilitate the process through isolation [of the country], sanctions and pressure.\"\n\"Now Donald Trump and his administration say that it is necessary to act decisively and take measures against the DPRK, including military options. However, in my opinion this is still a bluff. And this bluff is aimed primarily at making China act more decisively towards North Korea,\" the Russian academic said.\nToloray believes that Washington is unlikely to use force against Pyongyang in the near future.\n\"[US] aircraft carriers have been once again dispatched to [the Korean Peninsula] to emphasize [Washington's] importance in the world. But I still do not think that a military conflict is really in the [White House's] plans, since it would have the most destructive consequences not only for South Korea and Japan, but also for the US itself, including their servicemen. North Koreans have something to retaliate with even without nuclear weapons,\" Toloray remarked.\nIgor Korotchenko, a Russian military expert and editor of \"National Defense\" magazine, shares a similar stance.\n\"It is possible that Kim Jong Un has a special team, the goal and the task of which is to retaliate in the event of an aggression against North Korea. For example, it is possible that one or two nuclear warheads could be loaded on a submarine and then this sub will head either toward the coast of South Korea, the United States or to the Japanese coast, where nuclear action can be carried out. It is a terrible scenario, all this puts the world on the brink of World War III,\" Korotchenko told Radio Sputnik on Sunday.\nLast week Trump vowed to \"take care of\" the North Korean \"problem.\"\nFor its part, Pyongyang pledged to launch a \"preemptive strike\" in the event of any \"US provocation,\" at US bases in South Korea, Japan and the USS Carl Vinson.", "CUBA: Cuba is poised for the end of an era today (Apr 19) as President Raul Castro steps down, formally handing power to his long-time deputy Miguel Diaz-Canel – and thereby ending his family’s six-decade grip on the island.\nThursday 19 April 2018, 09:53AM\nCuban President Raul Castro (left) waves to the room as First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Castro’s hand-picked successor, claps at the National Assembly session yesterday (Apr 18) in Havana. Photo: STR / AFP / Getty Images\nThe silver-haired Diaz-Canel, 57 – a top Communist Party figure who has served as first vice president since 2013 – will become the island’s first leader born after the 1959 revolution, and the first in 60 years who is not named Castro.\nBetween them, father of the nation Fidel and his younger brother Raul made the Caribbean island a key player in the Cold War and helped keep communism afloat despite the collapse of the Soviet Union.\nRaul, now 86, has been in power since 2006, when he took over after illness sidelined Fidel, who seized power in the revolution.\nDiaz-Canel, who has spent years climbing the party ranks, was named the sole candidate for the presidency yesterday (Apr 18).\nHe will formally be confirmed as the country’s leader at roughly 9am (8pm Thai time) today – the anniversary of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, when Fidel Castro’s forces defeated 1,400 US-backed rebels seeking to overthrow him.\nHavana has long hailed the showdown as American imperialism’s first great defeat in Latin America.\nIt is also the day before the new president’s 58th birthday.\nDiaz-Canel, who some say bears a passing resemblance to American actor Richard Gere, is a fan of The Beatles whose penchant for wearing jeans has set him apart in Havana’s corridors of power.\nAlthough he has advocated fewer restrictions on the press and a greater openness to the internet, he also has a ruthless streak, with harsh words for Cuba’s dissidents and the United States.\nCrucially, he will remain under the watchful eye of Castro, who will continue to serve as the head of Cuba’s all-powerful Communist Party.\nOnce sworn in, Diaz-Canel will be tasked with pursuing reforms begun by Castro to open up Cuba’s economy to small private entrepreneurs and reach a rapprochement with its Cold War arch-enemy, the United States.\nIn 2015, Havana and Washington renewed diplomatic ties, with then president Barack Obama making a historic visit to the island a year later.\nBut, steps towards a normalisation of ties have been severely curtailed since Donald Trump arrived in the White House last year.\nDiaz-Canel will also inherit a youthful population hungry for change on the Caribbean island – one of the world’s last outposts of Communism since the collapse of the Soviet Union.\nCuba watchers and domestic analysts say he will favour continuity over change in the early days of his presidency, however.\nAs they began their momentous two-day meeting yesterday, the 605 delegates of the National Assembly cast their votes for the new Council of State, which counts 31 members and whose head automatically becomes president.\n“I have the honourable mission of putting forward comrade Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez as president of the Council of State,” commission president Gisela Duarte told assembly delegates, effectively ending any suspense over the identity of Cuba’s new leader.\nDelegates immediately broke into applause and the two men rose to share an embrace as Cuba’s two other vice presidents, both veterans of the revolution, looked on from the row behind.\nToday’s session will simply formalise the vote.", "A \"handful\" of private U.S. citizens who traveled to Cuba say they have experienced symptoms similar to those suffered by American diplomats in mysterious health \"attacks\" in Havana, the U.S. State Department said Friday.\nA State Department spokesperson, who declined to be named, said that the agency could not verify the claims but that travelers should heed its travel warning issued last Friday.\nThe warning urged Americans to stay away from Cuba because of unexplained health \"attacks\" it said had caused hearing loss, dizziness, fatigue and cognitive issues among at least 22 diplomatic personnel.\nThe Trump administration on Tuesday expelled 15 Cuban diplomats to protest Cuba's failure to protect staff at the U.S. Embassy in the communist country, just days after Washington recalled more than half the U.S. diplomatic personnel from Havana.\nCuba has denied involvement, and Washington has not directly blamed the government in Havana. So far, no probes have yielded any answers about how the alleged attacks were carried out or who was responsible.\nThe warning said the attacks had occurred in \"diplomatic residences and hotels frequented by U.S. citizens.\" CBS News first reported that some private citizens had complained of symptoms after visiting Cuba.\nTwo hotels\nOn Friday, the U.S. Embassy in Havana identified the Hotel Nacional and Hotel Capri as the two places where it said embassy personnel had been targeted over the past few months. It said the U.S. government had \"imposed limitations on lodging\" there.\nReceptionists at both hotels, when contacted by Reuters, said they had not heard of any restrictions. Both said they had Americans registered there and their managers were not immediately available for comment.\nU.S. intelligence operatives working undercover were among the embassy personnel affected by the attacks, but it was unclear whether they were specifically targeted, since the symptoms hit staff across a range of job categories, U.S. officials have told Reuters.\nThe steps taken by Republican President Donald Trump's administration deliver another blow to his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama's policy of rapprochement, including actions likely to erode the normalization of a relationship dominated for decades by Cold War hostility and suspicion.\nCuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez denounced the expulsion of Cuban diplomats as \"unjustified,\" accused the United States of insufficient cooperation with Cuba's investigation and urged Washington to stop politicizing the matter.\nTheories about the attacks abound, from surveillance technology gone awry to a sophisticated acoustic weapon in the hands of Cuban-American exiles or third-party state actors such as Russia, Iran or North Korea. But no clear explanation has emerged.", "Exclusive: President Trump’s acceptance of National Security Advisor Flynn’s resignation marks Official Washington’s first big success in neutering Trump and killing hopes for a détente with Russia, reports Robert Parry.\nBy Robert Parry\nThe neocon-dominated U.S. foreign policy establishment won an important victory in forcing the resignation of President Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Flynn over a flimsy complaint that he had talked to the Russian ambassador during the transition.\nThe Washington Post, the neoconservatives’ media flagship, led the assault on Flynn, an unorthodox thinker who shared the neocons’ hostility toward Iran but broke with them in seeing no strategic reason to transform Russia into an implacable enemy.\nAfter Flynn’s resignation on Monday evening, the Post gloated over its success in achieving the first major crack in Trump’s resistance to Official Washington’s establishment. The Post cited Flynn’s “potentially illegal contacts” with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, a reference to the Logan Act, a 1799 never-enforced law that forbids private citizens from negotiating with a country in dispute with the U.S. government.\nThough no one has ever been prosecuted under the Logan Act, it has been cited in recent decades as an excuse to attack American citizens who disagree with U.S. government policies while traveling abroad and having contacts with foreign leaders.\nOften those accusations are aimed at Americans seeking to peacefully resolve disputes when a U.S. president is eager to escalate a conflict, such as President Ronald Reagan’s denunciations of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson for visiting Cuba and House Speaker Jim Wright for exploring ways to end the Contra war in Nicaragua.\nIn other words, the Logan Act is usually exploited in a McCarthyistic fashion to bait or discredit peace advocates, similarly to how it has now been used to destroy Flynn for daring to look for ways to reduce the dangerous tensions between Washington and Moscow.\nBut the media-driven attacks on Flynn are particularly curious since he was the National Security Advisor-designate of an incoming administration at the time of the calls and – as such – he would be expected to make contacts with important foreign officials to begin laying the groundwork for relations with the new president.\nWhether U.S. sanctions against Russia were mentioned or not, the notion that an elected president or his designees – during a transition – can have no meaningful contact with diplomats whom they may need to deal with in a matter of weeks represents a particularly contentious interpretation of a law that has never been tested in a court of law and may well represent an unconstitutional infringement on free speech and dissent.\nAn Expanding Hysteria\nIndeed, referencing the Logan Act appears to be an excuse to continue – and expand – Official Washington’s hysteria over Russia, which has become the useful villain to blame for every U.S. foreign policy debacle and even Hillary Clinton’s disastrous presidential run.\nFlynn’s more egregious offense in this case may have been to mislead Vice President Mike Pence on exactly what was discussed, but Trump’s White House has not seemed previously overly concerned with the precise accuracy of its statements.\nIndeed, Trump and his team have tangled themselves up for weeks by promoting “alternative facts” — that Donald Trump’s inaugural crowd was bigger than Barack Obama’s and that Trump would have won the popular vote if not for three million to five million illegal votes. Though these absurd claims pertain more to Trump’s ego than to anything important, he and his representatives have continued fighting these fights on Twitter and TV appearances and show no signs of stopping.\nSo, the ouster of Flynn for failing to provide a complete readout on some telephone conversations in December stands out as even more significant in the context of the deluge of falsehoods that have poured forth from Trump’s White House.\nFlynn’s real “offense” appears to be that he favors détente with Russia rather than escalation of a new and dangerous Cold War. Trump’s idea of a rapprochement with Moscow – and a search for areas of cooperation and compromise – has been driving Official Washington’s foreign policy establishment crazy for months and the neocons, in particular, have been determined to block it.\nThough Flynn has pandered to elements of the neocon movement with his own hysterical denunciations of Iran and Islam in general, he emerged as a key architect for Trump’s plans to seek a constructive relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Meanwhile, the neocons and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks have invested heavily in making Putin the all-purpose bête noire to justify a major investment in new military hardware and in pricy propaganda operations.\nThe neocons and liberal hawks also hated Flynn because – as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency – he oversaw a prescient 2012 analysis that foresaw that their support for the Syrian insurgency would give rise to “a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria.”\nThe DIA report, which was partially declassified in a lawsuit over the 2012 killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other U.S. personnel in Benghazi, Libya, embarrassed the advocates for an escalation of the war in Syria and the ouster of secular President Bashar al-Assad.\nFlynn even went further in a 2015 interview when he said the intelligence was “very clear” that the Obama administration made a “willful decision” to back these jihadists in league with Middle East allies, a choice that looked particularly stupid when Islamic State militants started beheading American hostages and capturing cities in Iraq.\nA Beloved ‘Regime Change’\nBut “regime change” in Syria was dear to the neocons’ hearts. After all, Israeli leaders had declared Assad’s removal central to smashing the so-called “Shiite crescent” reaching from Tehran through Damascus to Beirut.\nThe neocons and liberal hawks had come very close to getting the direct U.S. military intervention that they so wanted to destroy Assad’s army after a mysterious sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013. The Obama administration quickly pinned the atrocity on Assad even though a number of U.S. intelligence analysts suspected a “false flag” attack carried out by jihadists.\nStill, despite those doubts, it appeared a bombing campaign against Assad was in the offing, except that Obama delayed its implementation and Putin then proposed an alternative in which Assad would surrender all his chemical weapons.\nPutin’s interference in the neocon/liberal-hawk war plans made him the new prime target – and Ukraine became ground zero for the effort to explode the cooperative relationship between Obama and Putin.\nOn Sept. 26, 2013, only weeks after the aborted U.S. bombing campaign against Syria, Carl Gershman, the neocon president of the U.S.-government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, took to the Post’s op-ed page to declare “Ukraine the biggest prize” and suggest that winning it could ultimately lead to toppling Putin inside Russia.\nKey U.S. government neocons, such as Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and Sen. John McCain, then began pushing for the violent right-wing coup that – in February 2014 – ousted Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych and touched off the new Cold War with Russia.\nAmid these heightened tensions, the mainstream media in the United States and Europe joined in the full-scale Russia/Putin-bashing. All rational perspective on the underlying reality was lost, except for a handful of independent Internet journalists and foreign-policy outsiders who rejected the over-the-top propaganda.\nA Few Dissenters Too Many\nBut even a few dissenters was a few dissenters too many. So, to enforce the new groupthink – holding Russia at fault for pretty much everything – a new McCarthyism emerged, deeming anyone who dared disagree a “Moscow stooge” or a “Russian propagandist.”\nThe ugliness penetrated into the U.S. presidential campaign because Democrat Hillary Clinton took a belligerent line toward Russia while Trump broke with the Republican establishment and called for improved ties between Washington and Moscow. Clinton called Trump Putin’s “puppet” and – after Clinton’s stunning loss – the Obama administration floated unproven allegations that Putin had intervened in the election to put Trump in the White House.\nThis hysteria over Russia gained added strength because Democrats were so angry over Trump’s election that liberal and progressive operatives saw a chance to build a movement and raise lots of money by pushing the Trump-Putin accusations.\nThis opportunism has turned much of the liberal/progressive community into a pro-New Cold War constituency willing to engage in a new breed of McCarthyism by demanding intensive investigations into alleged connections between Americans and Russians.\nFrom the neocon side, The Washington Post has gone so far as to promote baseless accusations from an anonymous group called PropOrNot that 200 Internet sites, including Consortiumnews.com and other important independent news sources, are guilty of spreading Russian propaganda. Congress approved a new $160 million bureaucracy to combat such “propaganda.”\nHowever, since Trump’s inauguration, the focus has shifted to Flynn, as the personification of the effort to cool off the New Cold War, because he had phone conversations with the Russian ambassador that presumably were intercepted by U.S. intelligence.\nBecause Flynn supposedly misrepresented some details of the calls to Vice President Mike Pence, senior Justice Department holdovers from the Obama administration concocted an argument that Flynn might be vulnerable to Russian blackmail.\nThe argument is dubious because the Russians would know that the U.S. government knew exactly what the conversations entailed, so how would the blackmail work? But this “blackmail” argument is another throwback to the earlier McCarthy days when gays were barred from sensitive government jobs because of their alleged susceptibility to blackmail.\nBut the gambit to get Flynn worked. Amid frenzied coverage on CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media, Flynn and the Russia détente that he stood for were not expected to be long for this world of Official Washington.\nFlynn’s resignation and its acceptance by Trump also prove that these tactics work and that “tough-guy” Trump is not immune to them. While the President may battle to the end over pointless questions about the size of his inaugural crowd and his belief that he should have won the popular vote, he will cave when the pressure builds on a matter of genuine substance and real importance to the future of the world.\nThe so-called permanent government of Washington and its complicit mainstream media – what some call the Deep State – have taught Trump a lesson and have learned a lesson, too. They now can be expected to redouble their march toward war and more war, ironically with progressives and leftists in tow.\nInvestigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).", "* Markets still react to Trump remarks on dollar, rates\n* Wall Street equity indexes little changed\n* Oil futures mixed, treasury yields pull off lows (Updates to U.S. open, adds commentary, changes byline, previous dateline LONDON)\nBy Sinead Carew\nNEW YORK, April 13 The U.S. dollar rebounded on Thursday after sliding a day earlier following remarks by President Donald Trump on the currency and interest rates, while a consumer sentiment survey helped lift U.S. Treasury yields off five-month lows.\nThe benchmark S&P 500 stock index was modestly higher as strength in U.S. technology and financial stocks offset declines in sectors like energy and consumer staples.\nThe U.S. dollar had tumbled Wednesday after Trump told the Wall Street Journal the greenback \"getting too strong\" and would eventually hurt the U.S. economy. Treasury yields fell after Trump said he would like to see interest rates stay low.\n\"Clearly, I think (the dollar) was oversold yesterday,\" said Peter Ng, senior currency trader at Silicon Valley Bank in Santa Clara, California. \"The market was very sensitive to headlines given how nervous it has become due to geopolitical risk.\"\nTrading was thinner than usual during an abbreviated week, with the impending holiday for Good Friday in the United States and Europe, Ng said.\nThe dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six trade-weighted peers, was up 0.4 percent, after a 0.6 percent decline on Wednesday marked its biggest one-day fall in three weeks.\nThe dollar was up 0.2 percent at $109.22 against the Japanese yen, having hit a five-month low of 108.73 yen in early Asian trading.\nYIELDS OFF LOWS\nU.S. Treasury yields hit session highs, pulling away from five-month lows earlier in the day, after a University of Michigan survey showed U.S. consumer sentiment unexpectedly improved in early April.\nBefore the data, Trump's favorable view of low interest rates had intensified this week's bond market rally that was underpinned by geopolitical worries.\nThe yield on benchmark 10-year Treasury notes was 2.264 percent, down 3 basis points from late on Wednesday. It touched 2.218 percent earlier in the day, the lowest since Nov. 17.\nThe MSCI all-world stock index was little changed with a 0.01 percent increase.\nU.S. stocks were little changed as investors assessed the first rush of bank earnings and Trump's remarks on the dollar's strength and interest rates.\nThe Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 9.12 points, or 0.04 percent, to 20,600.98, the S&P 500 gained 2.26 points, or 0.10 percent, to 2,347.19 and the Nasdaq Composite added 17.86 points, or 0.31 percent, to 5,854.02.\nThe S&P 500 bank subsector was boosted by stronger than expected earnings at JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup . However, Wells Fargo & Co was a drag with a 1.5 percent decline after it reported a big drop in mortgage banking revenue.\nThe FTSEurofirst 300 index of large companies was down 0.4 percent, putting it on track for a loss for the holiday-shortened week.\nIn commodities, oil prices were mixed after the International Energy Agency (IEA) said the market was nearing balance, but U.S. data showed higher production. U.S. crude was down 0.2 percent to $53.04 a barrel, while global benchmark Brent was up 0.3 percent at $56.02.\nGold fell 0.09 percent to $1,284.90 an ounce after hitting a five-month high earlier in the session.\n(Additional reporting by Dion Rabouin in New York, Jamie McGeever, Abhinav Ramnarayan in London; Editing by Bernadette Baum)", "Stephen Bannon has left the Trump administration. But he's still having an influence at a government agency many outside of Washington haven't heard of but wields influence around the world: the Broadcasting Board of Governors.\nThe board controls U.S. government-funded media outlets like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. Its aim is to counter propaganda from repressive regimes with independent news coverage and promote democracy to the rest of the world.\nAn ally of Bannon, the former White House chief strategist who has returned to Breitbart, is expected to be nominated as BBG's next chief executive.\nBut it's another man whose statements are raising concern internally. Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, a former investigative reporter who has ties to Bannon, was tapped by the White House for a position within the BBG over the summer. The BBG placed him in a job as a senior adviser to the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, a board division that runs Radio and TV Marti and other programs aimed at Cuba.\nShapiro has told colleagues that his goal is to turn the entire Broadcasting Board of Governors into a \"Bannon legacy,\" according to three sources within or familiar with the agency. He has also said he believes the Castros have infiltrated the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, the sources told CNN.\nThe Office of Cuba Broadcasting, with an annual budget of $28 million and 125 employees, uses \"satellite television, shortwave and AM radio, as well as ... flash drives, emails, DVDs, and SMS text [to bring] unbiased, objective information to all Cubans,\" according to its website.\nThe Broadcasting Board of Governors is considered the U.S. government's largest public diplomacy program. It reaches an audience of 278 million in more than 100 countries and 61 languages.\nAccording to three sources, Shapiro has alarmed BBG employees, who see themselves as stewards of a free press and democracy to a people living under a repressive regime.\n\"[Shapiro has] been known to tell people that he'd like to see the BBG turned into a Bannon legacy,\" said a BBG official who requested anonymity. \"Jeff Shapiro came in telling everyone he bumps into that he's a Bannon guy, that he talks to Bannon every day, telling people 'Bannon had entered the BBG through me.'\"\nShapiro has a long and varied career. In addition to his work as a lawyer, he's written for Bannon at Breitbart. More recently he has worked as a Washington Times investigative journalist. After last year's election, Shapiro wrote an op-ed defending Bannon from claims that Bannon was anti-semitic and a white nationalist.\nColleagues at the BBG pointed to some of Shapiro's writings that have pushed questionable theories. For example, in a 2011 column published in the Washington Times and Breitbart, Shapiro lamented that journalists had not investigated the authenticity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate \"with the same investigative drive with which they did investigate Watergate, President Clinton's alleged indiscretions and the Bush administration's missteps in Iraq.\"\nNow, at the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, he has told people he is there to root out anyone who is not loyal to Trump and Bannon, according to the three sources.\n\"He sees himself as the Bannon talker, the Bannon whisperer inside of the BBG to root out all Trump disloyalists,\" said a person with detailed knowledge of the board and its discussions. \"He truly believes that the Office of Cuba Broadcasting is in the pocket of Castro. That it's full of Trump disloyalty and those kinds of things and it's his job to make sure it is a tool of the Trump administration.\"\nIt's not clear whether Shapiro and Bannon actually talk on a regular basis. A spokesperson for Bannon did not respond to requests for comment.\nA spokesperson for the BBG declined to comment, saying they don't discuss personnel or personnel issues, and directed questions to Shapiro directly, who did not respond to emails seeking comment.\nThe Trump administration placed two other advisers into positions at the BBG in January: Matthew Ciepielowski, New Hampshire state director for the Trump campaign, and Matthew Schuck, who was the campaign's Wisconsin communications director. Their roles were to act as liaisons between the Trump administration and the BBG headquarters. A BBG official said they have been constructive members of the team.\nAt the moment, neither Shapiro, Ciepielowski nor Schuck have decision making power. But another Bannon-ally may soon be in charge of the entire operation and with more unilateral power than the current CEO because of forthcoming changes to the leadership structure. People within the BBG wonder what, if any positions Shapiro may have after the new CEO takes over.\nMichael Pack, a documentary film maker and former head of the conservative Claremont Institute, has been the White House's expected pick since early summer to serve as CEO of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Pack, who at one point also served on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, worked on two documentaries with Bannon. Pack also appeared on Bannon's radio show and wrote an op-ed praising Bannon as a pioneer conservative who can break through the \"left-wing monopoly\" on documentary films.\nWhile his nomination has not yet been sent to the Senate, Pack has been preparing for the move, stepping down as president of the Claremont Institute in California over the summer.\nShould Pack be confirmed, he'd have more unilateral power over the agency because of a provision enacted in the last weeks of the Obama administration that would disband the bipartisan board, which supporters saw as a firewall between the administration and the agency. Proponents though promoted the move as one to make the organization more efficient.\nA White House spokesperson said they had no announcement at the time regarding Pack.\nPack declined to comment via a Claremont spokesperson who said in an email that \"out of respect for the selection and nomination process, which is still ongoing, Mr. Pack would like to refrain from comment at this time.\"", "Stephen Miller — the the senior adviser who wrote Donald Trump's angry inauguration speech and helped craft his Muslim ban — appeared on four Sunday morning talk shows last weekend to parrot the president's as-of-yet baseless claims that a \"massive\" number of people voted illegally in the 2016 election, as well as to trash the courts for taking power that belongs \"squarely in the hands of the president\" and boast about the administration's achievements.\n\"The president of the United States has accomplished more in just a few weeks than many presidents do in an entire administration,\" Miller said on Face The Nation.\nPresident Trump took a quick break from his Twitter feud with Mark Cuban and his endless whining about the media to give Miller a pat on the back for a job well done.\nCongratulations Stephen Miller- on representing me this morning on the various Sunday morning shows. Great job! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 12, 2017\nHere's what you need to know about the 31-year-old senior adviser.\nStephen Miller's background\nStephen Miller smiles at a county sheriff listening session Feb. 7 at the White House. Source: Pool/Getty Images\nMiller attended Duke University, where he reportedly worked with white nationalist glass jaw Richard Spencer on the Duke Conservative Union. Miller rose to prominence during the school's 2006 lacrosse scandal, when he made frequent appearances on cable news to defend the white players falsely accused of raping an African-American woman.\nBefore teaming up with Trump, Miller worked as an aide to former Rep. Michele Bachmann and as the communications director for then-Sen. Jeff Sessions.\n\"Political radicalization\" began early.\nStephen Miller arrives at Trump Tower in January. Source: Drew Angerer/Getty Images\nThe summer before he entered high school, Miller reportedly stopped talking to a childhood friend, Jason Islas. \"I can't be your friend anymore because you are Latino,\" Islas recalled Miller telling him during an interview with Univision.\nFrom that point forward, Univision reported, Miller \"stood out as a contentious and provocative student whose conservative and ultra-nationalist politics put him continuously at odds with teachers, administrators and students\" at liberal, multicultural Santa Monica High School.\nPrivately and in the media, a teenage Miller mocked the children of immigrants who did not speak English, took umbrage at the existence of a gay club at the school and attempted to \"sabotage\" a school committee to help African American and Hispanic students, according to Univision.\n“He wanted to sabotage us,” said Oscar de la Torre, a school board member. “He confronted everyone, denying that racism existed. He said that was a thing of the past.”\nLater, at Duke, he wrote columns for the student newspaper condemning multiculturalism, the so-called War on Christmas and feminism. He also described the beloved poet Maya Angelou as being full of \"racial paranoia,\" and helped Spencer put on an on-campus immigration debate featuring white nationalist Peter Brimelow.\n\"He’s the most sanctimonious student I think I ever encountered,\" John Burness, Duke’s former senior vice president of public affairs and government relations, told the News & Observer earlier this month. \"He seemed to be absolutely sure of his own views and the correctness of them, and seemed to assume that if you were in disagreement with him, there was something malevolent or stupid about your thinking. Incredibly intolerant.\"\nHe's helping to drive Trump's \"America First\" agenda.\nSenior policy adviser Stephen Miller looks on as Donald Trump signs an executive order regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Source: Saul Loeb/Getty Images\nWith chief strategist Stephen Bannon, Miller has helped motor the Trump administration's nationalistic agenda. He helped write both the president's \"American carnage\" inauguration address and his dark acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. He also reportedly played a key role in crafting Trump's executive orders on immigration.", "It was back to business for Vladimir Putin on Monday who, in between fielding international congratulations for his re-election, was meeting with his supporters and with the political opponents he had beaten so decisively at the polls.\nBut the Russian president was keeping people guessing about what lay ahead in his fourth term, saying he would wait until after his May 7th inauguration to reveal detailed plans.\nFinal results released on Monday morning showed Putin had won a 76.6 per cent of the vote cast at the election on Sunday, the highest score ever in a Russian presidential poll. Putin’s nearest competitor Pavel Grudinin, representing the Communist Party won 11.77 per cent of the vote. Kseniya Sobchak, a TV celebrity and liberal opposition activist, was among the straggling runners up collecting 1.68 per cent of the votes.\nAddressing a rally in Manezh Square near the Moscow Kremlin late on Sunday night, Putin thanked jubilant, flag-waving crowds for support, saying Russia was on the “threshold of big success”.\n“We have to preserve this unity. It’s very important to attract all these people who voted for other candidates to my side. We need unity in order to move forward.”\nOpposition groups reported widespread incidents of electoral fraud and claimed the 67 per cent turn out had been achieved after pressure was applied to voters to go to the polls.\nAn observer mission from Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe said on Monday the election had been conducted in an overly controlled legal and political environment marked by continued pressure on critical voices.\nWhile Putin’s campaign team gloried in their victory, opposition leaders were at each other’s throats.\nAlexei Navalny, the popular anti-corruption crusader who had campaigned for an election boycott after being officially barred from the ballot, rounded on Ms Sobchak saying she had colluded with the Kremlin to give a veneer of democracy to the election. “I refuse to work with you. You and I have no common goal. In these so-called elections, you showed that you were a champion hypocrite.”\nThe bitter row between Navalny and Sobchak pointed to a deepening rift in the Russian opposition that will complicate her plans to bring together a new liberal party to challenge Putin in the years ahead.\nPutin met the seven election candidates he had defeated in the election on Monday to explore possible co-operation in future. Bruised by Mr Navalny’s insults, Ms Sobchak indicated before the meeting she was not minded to compromise, saying she would use the talks to urge Putin to release political prisoners.\nMost Russian commentators agree that Putin, who has overseen an intensifying crackdown on the opposition since massive protests erupted ahead of his inauguration to a third term in 2012, is likely to move further to sideline all genuine political competition.\nFor the Kremlin the “whole election campaign had been geared towards demonstrating the superiority of the main hero of the campaign, over the Russian political system, his omnipotence and his disproportional stature in the whole miserable political landscape,” wrote Konstantin Gaaze, a political commentator at the Carnegie Moscow Center.\nWorld leaders from China to Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba and Syria, as well as a clutch of former Soviet states congratulated Putin on his election victory on Monday. Xi Jinping, who won rights to rule as China’s president for life at the weekend, declared strong support, saying his country’s partnership with Russia was at it’s “best level in history.” But in a sign of the dismal state of relation with Russia, few western leaders have made any comment about Putin’s re-election.\nSpeaking to reporters on Monday, Putin sketched out goals for his fourth term, pledging to prioritise the domestic agenda with a greater spending on health and education and the construction of new infrastructure. Investment in the military would also be a priority as Russia continued to bolster its defense capability.\nEconomists have pointed out that Russia, facing the risk of yet tougher western sanctions cannot afford to splurge on welfare benefits as well as the military and that something will have to give.\nA clearer picture of Putin’s intentions will come when he appoints a new government, but on Monday he declined to provide any details of whether reformist doves or traditionalist hawks would have the upper hand in the cabinet, saying the decision would wait until after his inauguration.\nMr Gaaze said that with the Russian constitution barring presidents from serving more than two consecutive terms, the succession question would dominate Putin’s agenda in the coming years. Members of the elite Russian vulnerable to international prosecution for alleged meddling in the US election or pursuit or military aggression in Ukraine would see Putin as the only guarantor of their security and press him to stay in office for life.\nHowever, Putin laughed off questions from reporters on Sunday night that he might run for yet another election at the end of his fourth term. “What you’re saying is a bit silly,” he said. “Do you think I will stay here until I’m 100 years old? No. “", "Social media was flooded on Tuesday night with claims Donald Trump had turned his back on Kellyanne Conway - at least when it came to social media.\nThousands were quick to trumpet that Trump had unfollowed his counselor on Twitter from his personal account, while the official @POTUS and @WhiteHouse accounts did the same.\n'Oh. Wow. Donald has unfollowed Kellyanne Conway. There are so many plot twists. It must be near the climax,' author Matt Haig wrote.\n'So @realDonaldTrump, @POTUS and @WhiteHouse have all unfollowed @KellyannePolls,' Brian Scully said.\nSocial media was flooded on Tuesday night with claims Donald Trump had turned his back on Kellyanne Conway - at least on Twitter\nMany claimed Trump had unfollowed Conway's Twitter account - suggesting it was a sign her job was in jeopardy\n'CNN will soon have a new contributor,' one user joked about the alleged unfollowings.\n'@realDonaldTrump. You, @WhiteHouse and @POTUS all just unfollowed Kellyanne Connway... got something you wanna tell us?!?' William LeGate wrote.\nLeGate continued: 'Will she be fired over Twitter? Or are we gonna have to tune into the next episode of Spicer's morning show???'\n'He unfollowed her on twitter. She gone,' another added.\nSocial media users directed many of the comments about Conway's alleged unfollowing at the president\nShortly after the claims because to spread across social media, Trump righted the wrong and followed Conway from both his personal account and @POTUS.\nBut unfortunately for those who worked themselves into a frenzy over the alleged unsubscribing, it appeared as though Trump never followed Kellyanne in the first place.\nA Business Insider article from earlier this month captured how Conway was not among the then-41 accounts followed by the president. Most were his family or businesses, with a few friendly media figures thrown in for good measure.\nOthers on Twitter tried to point out this apparent fact.\nOthers were claiming it was Conway who had cut the president out of her social media circle, suggesting she deleted Trump-related snaps from her page\nConway's page was changed to no longer include a picture of Trump's inauguration as her profile photo, and her 'header image' was changed to a solid pink wallpaper\nConway's Twitter page has previous featured pictures of her with Trump. This screengrab is from earlier this month, when a profile picture from the inauguration can also be seen\n'Sorry but there is zero evidence she was unfollowed by any of the accounts,' Brian Abrams wrote.\n'Yeah he never followed her,' journalist Olivia Nuzzi added.\nMeanwhile, others were claiming it was Conway who had cut the president out of her social media circle, suggesting she deleted Trump-related snaps from her page.\n'6:55pm POTUS, Donald Trump and Whitehouse unfollow Kellyanne Conway on Twitter. 7pm Kellyanne deletes POTUS picture from profile,' one person wrote.\nDonald Trump speaks as Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos listens during a parent-teacher conference at the Roosevelt Room of the White House\nBefore and after: Trump did not follow Conway on Twitter earlier in the night (top) but then began to after people began talking about it (bottom)\nConway had changed her profile picture recently from a shot of the inauguration crowd to one of her with the phrase, 'her way', across the bottom.\nThe motivation behind her change is not known.\nHer profile was also updated so that her 'header image' - the picture across the top of her page - is now a solid pink background.\nIt capped off a busy day for Conway on Twitter, after she was accused of saying 'love you back' to a white nationalist.", "By Matt Spetalnick\nWASHINGTON (Reuters) - A \"handful\" of private U.S. citizens who traveled to Cuba say they have experienced symptoms similar to those suffered by American diplomats in mysterious health \"attacks\" in Havana, the U.S. State Department said on Friday.\nA State Department spokesperson, who declined to be named, said the agency could not verify the claims but said travelers should heed its travel warning issued last Friday.\nThe warning urged Americans to stay away from Cuba because of unexplained health \"attacks\" it says have caused hearing loss, dizziness, fatigue and cognitive issues among at least 22 diplomatic personnel.\nThe Trump administration on Tuesday expelled 15 Cuban diplomats to protest Cuba's failure to protect staff at the U.S. embassy in the communist country, just days after Washington recalled more than half the U.S. diplomatic personnel from Havana.\nCuba has denied involvement, and Washington has not directly blamed the government in Havana. So far, no probes have yielded any answers about how the alleged attacks were carried out or who was responsible.\nThe warning said the attacks had occurred in \"diplomatic residences and hotels frequented by U.S. citizens.\" CBS News first reported that some private citizens had complained of symptoms after visiting Cuba.\nOn Friday, the U.S. embassy in Havana identified the Hotel Nacional and Hotel Capri as the two places where it said embassy personnel had been targeted over the past few months, and said the U.S. government had \"imposed limitations on lodging\" there.\nReceptionists at both hotels, when contacted by Reuters, said they had not heard of any restrictions. Both said they had Americans registered there and their managers were not immediately available for comment.\nU.S. intelligence operatives working undercover were among the embassy personnel affected by the attacks, but it was unclear if they were specifically targeted since the symptoms hit staff across a range of job categories, U.S. officials have told Reuters.\nThe steps taken by Republican President Donald Trump's administration deliver another blow to his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama’s policy of rapprochement, including actions likely to erode the normalization of a relationship dominated for decades by Cold War hostility and suspicion.\nCuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez denounced the expulsion of Cuban diplomats as “unjustified,” accused the United States of insufficient cooperation with Cuba’s investigation and urged Washington to stop politicizing the matter.\nTheories about the attacks abound, from surveillance technology gone awry to a sophisticated acoustic weapon in the hands of Cuban-American exiles or third-party state actors such as Russia, Iran or North Korea. But no clear explanation has emerged.\n(Reporting by Matt Spetalnick, additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington and Marc Frank and Sarah Marsh in Havana; Editing by Sandra Maler)", "A company promoting a plan for the United States and Russia to jointly build nuclear reactors in the Middle East denied in a letter made public on Monday that its director received an Inauguration Day text message from incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn saying the project was \"good to go.\"\nWASHINGTON: A company promoting a plan for the United States and Russia to jointly build nuclear reactors in the Middle East denied in a letter made public on Monday that its director received an Inauguration Day text message from incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn saying the project was \"good to go.\"\nCiting a confidential informant, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives' Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week said Flynn and Alex Copson, managing director of ACU Strategic Partners, communicated during President Donald Trump's inaugural address about the project, which would have required lifting U.S. sanctions on Moscow.\nThomas Cochran, a business partner of Copson, wrote in a letter to the lawmaker, Representative Elijah Cummings, that the informant's allegations are \"patently false and unfounded.\"\nReuters was unable to identify the confidential informant or independently confirm the informant's information that was provided by Cummings.\nCopson has not responded to numerous requests for comment in recent months.\nCochran attached to the letter records for Copson's cell phone which, he said, show that he exchanged three text messages on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, none of them with Flynn.\nAdvertisement\nAdvertisement\n\"Since Mr. Copson did not receive a text message from General Flynn during the Inauguration, other allegations of the 'whistleblower' are equally false and unfounded,\" wrote Cochran, who is ACU Strategic Partners' senior scientist. Flynn is a retired Army general.\nReuters and other news organizations have reported that Flynn continued to promote a version of the nuclear project after he began work at the White House.\nAs part of his investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians during the 2016 U.S. election campaign, special counsel Robert Mueller is looking at whether Flynn or other Trump aides tried to influence U.S. policy to improve relations with Russia.\nProponents of the reactors project argued it would provide nuclear energy in the Middle East without the threat of weapons proliferation, improve U.S.-Russia relations and revive the U.S. nuclear industry.\nFlynn served just 24 days as Trump's national security adviser before being fired for misleading Vice President Michael Pence about whether he discussed U.S. sanctions with Russia's ambassador to Washington.\nHe pleaded guilty on Dec. 1 to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts.\nReuters reported that day that documents it had reviewed showed that ACU Strategic Partners bragged after Trump's Nov. 8, 2016, election that it had Flynn's backing.\nCummings wrote back to Copson on Monday, requesting that he participate in a transcribed interview \"so that our staff attorneys could ask you questions about your relationship and communications with General Flynn.\"\n\"It remains unclear why your colleague sent this letter rather than you,\" he wrote.\nCummings' office released Cochran's letter but not the attached phone records.\n(Reporting by Warren Strobel and Nathan Layne. Editing by Cynthia Osterman)", "Kellyanne Conway: ‘I Don’t Know Who’ Tweeted ‘Love You Back’ to a White Supremacist from My Account\n“It’s pretty hilarious that in 2017, a drawing is making the world go nuts.”\nThat’s what artist Edel Rodriguez says about his cover for Der Spiegel magazine that broke the internet last week.\nBut to be fair, it’s not just any drawing. It’s a cartoon of President Donald Trump, standing in the pose of a Jihadist warrior. In one hand, he holds the severed head of the Statue of Liberty, which is dripping blood onto the floor. In the other hand, he grasps a bloodstained knife. Der Spiegel’s online version even has an animated version of the image, with the blood dripping from Lady Liberty’s head.\nThe image sparked fierce debate online and in the press. Germany’s Die Welt daily said the cover “damages” and “devalues” journalism. Another paper, the center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, wrote that equating Trump and terrorism is too simple.\nThe artist, Edel Rodriguez, disagrees: “I don’t think you can be subtle about what’s happening right now,” he said. “ I think we were subtle […] during the primary. And because of that, because the media treated it as sort of a show and wasn’t very serious about it, we have the president that we have right now.”\nRodriguez started doing Trump covers last year. When it looked like the Trump campaign was in a tailspin, Rodriguez drew covers for TIME magazine that showed Trump’s head melting into a puddle, like the Wicked Witch of the West.\nAfter Trump won the election, he drew a cover for Der Speigel featuring Trump’s head as a fiery sun hurtling towards planet earth.\nRodriguez is already brainstorming for his next cover: “I can have Trump sitting on the Statue of Liberty’s head like [Auguste Rodin’s] The Thinker. And all that’s in his mind is a Twitter bird!”\nOr in case the president does a 180 on his political views, Rodriguez says, “maybe he’s on the statue and he’s sewing the head back on and we’re all good again. … Or if he gets impeached, I have an image for that.”\nBut he’s not giving spoilers on that one.\nRodriguez compares Trump to a schoolyard bully. And, he says, just like with any bully, people have to fight back.\n“When I was a kid I would go outside and get in trouble with someone,” he says. “They might punch me, and I’d come home crying, and my dad would say, just go out there and punch them harder next time. That’s how I grew up.”\nRodriguez spent his childhood in Havana, Cuba. He came to the United States as a refugee when he was 9 years old, on the Mariel boatlift in 1980.\nRodriguez says his experience as a political refugee informs his reaction to Trump: “Growing up in Cuba, I saw firsthand how people behave in a dictatorship. How they’re afraid to talk. So when I’ve been here [in the US], and I’ve seen people do that, it jogs my mind.”\nRodriguez says he started making political art to warn people, saying, “Hey, this is very serious! this is very important! Pay attention, pay attention, please pay attention. Part of it is that I’ve been there and I’ve seen what could happen.”\nThis article first appeared on PRI The World." ]

[ "Typical roadside 'breath-testing' measures metabolites produced in the metabolism of alcohol (primarily, they measure ethanal, oxidised ethanol). The level measured level of intoxication therefore definitely differs from person to person, and even day-to-day for everyone. Some people have higher metabolic rates, and will metabolise the alochol faster. Some people have greater amounts of alcohol dehydrogenase (enzyme that breaks down alcohol) than others. It follows, that a larger person will likely be able to consume more alcohol compared to a smaller person (compare the concentration of 1 g of salt in a small glass, compared to a large glass)\n\nHowever, there isn't really any fudge room for arguing against the tests. And most police-forces will back up breath testing with far more rigorous blood tests." ]

[ "Dogs are a little bit more affected of alcohol than humans\n\nBut they have less weight, so they are much more affected when they drink the same amount. Humans have a lethal dose of 5 to 8 g/kg. http://www.alcohol.org.nz/alcohol-its-effects/health-effects/alcohol-poisoning\nThe lethal dose of alcohol in dogs is 4.1-4.9g/kg.\n\n\n Du Jardin-Beaumetz (8) gave the lethal dose (LD50) of 95% ethyl alcohol in dogs as 5.5-6.5 mL/kg with death occurring 12-24 hours after ingestion (1). This volume of alcohol equates to approximately 4.1-4.9 g/kg of 100% ethanol (the density of 95% ethanol is approximately 816 mg/mL (4); the specific gravity of 100% ethanol is 0.789 (9)). The toxic dose of pure alcohol (200 proof; 100% alcohol/ volume) in all species has recently been reported to be of the order of 8 g/kg in a single dose (10) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1686341/pdf/canvetj00362-0043.pdf\n\n\nAnother way to measure the alcohol are the blood ethanol concentrations. The same article gives the following data:\n\n\n Respiratory depression occurs at 400-500 mg/dL; coma at 450-500 mg/dL; and death above 600 mg/dL (12).", "Both alcohol and prescription drugs (anxiolytics and antidepressants) can have a variable effect on one's alertness and reactions. Some people can drink 5 litres of beer and feel nothing. Many will feel dizzy and some will get near a coma. Men tolerate alcohol better than women and some guys are very quick metabolizers, so they get alcohol out of their blood very quickly. The same reasoning aplies to drugs that act on the central nervous system. They have a sedating effect similar to alcohol and one may not feel one hundred percent alert while others may feel extremely sedated and unable to perform tasks that require attention and precision. For all this, there is always a warning about mixing alcohol with those drugs. However, effects vary a lot and you may get away with drinking and taking an SSRI such as Fluoxetine, Paroxetine or Sertraline. With a Benzodiazepine (Alprazolam, Clonazepam, Diazepam) you have to be more careful. These drugs are more sedating than antidepressants and you may feel nothing, you may feel dizzy, or you may fall sound asleep. One never knows for sure, so you gotta be careful. And do not drink and drive, even if you haven't taken any of these drugs.", "Brandy affects blood pressure in the same way that any alcohol affects blood pressure. In the short term, alcohol can temporarily increase blood pressure. In the long term, with too much repeated consumption, there can be long-term more permanent blood pressure increases.", "tl;dr — By regulation, &plusmn;0.3-0.5%.\n\nChemically speaking, I'm not sure—maybe someone else can go into measuring techniques, alterations (continued fermentation?) during distribution, etc.\n\nBut countries and regions specify tolerances for error.\n\nIn the United States, according to Title 27: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Part 7: Labeling and Advertising of Malt Beverages, §7.71:\n\n\n (c) Tolerances. (1) For malt beverages containing 0.5 percent or more alcohol by volume, a tolerance of 0.3 percent will be permitted, either above or below the stated percentage of alcohol. Any malt beverage which is labeled as containing 0.5 percent or more alcohol by volume may not contain less than 0.5 percent alcohol by volume, regardless of any tolerance.\n\n\nhttp://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=1affcd509f9614478fbbc0c85551765a&amp;node=27:1.0.1.1.5.8.41.1&amp;rgn=div8\n\nIn the EU,\n\n\n \n 0.5% vol. for beers having an alcoholic strength not exceeding 5.5 % vol. and beverages classified under subheading 22.07 B II of the Common Customs Tariff and made from grapes\n 1% vol. for beers having an alcoholic strength exceeding 5.5 % vol. and beverages classified under subheading 22.07 B I of the Common Customs Tariff and made from grapes; ciders, berries, fruit wines, and the like; beverages based on fermented honey\n 1.5 % vol. for beverages containing macerated fruit or parts of plants\n 0.3 % vol. for other beverages\n \n\n\nhttp://www.icap.org/table/alcoholbeveragelabeling", "The effects of alcohol are exacerbated at altitude, each ounce of alcoholic beverage will have a greater perceived effect on the consumer. This is in part due to the lower oxygen level in the blood of anyone at altitude, usually this is most notable at or above 8,000ft. \n\nThere are some ways to mitigate the effects of alcohol, and speed recovery. \n\n\nDrink plenty of water: If you are at or above 8,000 feet and exercising heavily (ie. mountaineering, rock climbing, backcountry skiing) make sure to consume at least 72-128 ounces of water (2-4 liters) per day, more if in winter conditions or extreme heat. \nConsume food with any alcohol use\nDrink liquids containing sugar (hot tea with sugar is very popular)\nGet appropriate sleep.\n\n\nAlcohol will cause several detrimental effects pertaining to climbing as well. \n\n\nGreater dehydration due to vasodilation.\nIncreased effects of altitude, again due to vasodilation. \nDecreased perception of risk.\nGeneral decrease in mental decision making and judgement.\nDecreased ability to digest food, and therefore lower overall energy for climbing. \nDecreased temperature regulation, as the blood vessels in the skin are dilated and will release more body heat.\n\n\nThis doesn't mean you shouldn't drink any alcohol on a climbing trip, but you must be aware of it's effects and how to deal with them. All-in-all, use moderation and good judgement. \n\nHappy climbing!\n\nFurther reading\n\nDenver Forum - Effects of altitude and alcohol.", "There aren't many studies which associate between alcohol consumption and cancer to my knowledge. The association is more with metabolic diseases because the liver is affected.\n\nAlcohol is oxidised to acetaldehyde by alcohol dehydrogenase. Acetaldehyde may also, in turn affect the cells by DNA damage if it is not metabolized quickly to acetyl-CoA (perhaps in a manner similar to formaldehyde or by formation of Schiff's base with nucleotides). The other way by which alcohol is metabolised is through cytochrome-p450 (CYP2E1) which produces ROS (Hydrogen Peroxide), that may lead to carcinogenesis.\n\nYou might want to check this review.", "Can acute liver failure be caused by an alcohol binge? \n\n\nYes \n\n\n Are the harmful effects of alcohol on the liver limited to chronic abuse? \n\n\nNo.\nThe harmful effects of alcohol on the liver are in general certainly not limited to chronic abuse.\n\nThe immediate dangers of alcohol are often as much overstated as the long time dangers from it. \"Often overstated\" means portrayed as such from moral crusaders that want to condemn the substance as such. That is unfounded. The liver is usually quite resilient and capable of taking quite a lot of abuse.\n\nBut consumption of alcohol is not without dangers. Also not for a single incident. Of course it depends. The question does not indicate \"how much\" alcohol would be involved in that hypothetical incidence. \"One/Once too many\" can easily kill a human. That does not necessarily include involvement of acute hepatoxicity, although it mainly is common knowledge for acute overdose.\n\nDepending on individual genetics, nutritional status, fitness level, other health parameters, a single sufficiently large dose of alcohol can really damage a liver. Adding some drugs – like paracetamol – into the mix and the liver gets even more vulnerable.\n\nSome overview might be found in Definition, epidemiology and magnitude of alcoholic hepatitis", "The CDC suggests no more than 2 drinks a day as moderate drinking.\n\nThe National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism suggests no more than 4 drinks per day, and no more than 7 drinks per week, to stay at a low risk for an alcohol use.\n\nAt 17 your brain is still developing and imbibing alcohol runs the very real risk of affecting that development. Drink in moderation.\n\nIn response to the below comment, a single drink technically does vary but about 45ml / 1.5oz of spirit (e.g. vodka), a 5oz glass of wine, or a 12oz beer.\n\nWhen I say it varies, different locations have different measurements. Check out this page:\n\nStandard drink (Wikipedia)", "When drinking alcohol, the small water-soluble ethanol enters the bloodstream and moves around till it reaches the brain. Since it is a small molecule, it enters the blood-brain barrier and passes between brain cells (neurons) interfering with the neurotransmitters of the nervous system.\nEthanol causes the release of Dopamine (Happiness Hormone) and stops Glutamate (a neurotransmitter that normally excites neurons) and this makes the brain slower and the person calmer and sleepy.\n\nReferences and for more details:\nhttp://www.drinkingandyou.com/site/uk/xdrunk.htm\nhttp://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/drugs-alcohol/how-alcohol-makes-drunk.htm", "Your liver processes alcohol at a fixed rate (what that rate is depends on your tolerance, current liver function, what medications you are taking, and some genetics). So eating some food, particularly foods that absorb fluids like bread, will slow down the rate of alcohol absorption into your bloodstream, allowing your liver more time to metabolize the alcohol. \n\nSo for a fixed amount of alcohol, drinking on a full stomach will make you FEEL less drunk because you spread out the alcohol absorption over time so your liver has more time to metabolize it.\n\nHowever, you can still saturate your livers ability to metabolize alcohol by ingesting high volumes of alcohol and the absorptive ability of the food in your stomach is limited (unless you vomit it out) so it is FAR from reliable technique to drink but avoid becoming intoxicated or hungover since you are still absorbing all the ingested alcohol, just over a slightly longer period of time.", "It was an assessment of your mental status. It's usually among the first questions an EMT will ask. The purpose is to determine if your are mentally alert and oriented. The reasons for this assessment are to look for possible brain injury (concussion or worse) and also other causes such as intoxication with alcohol or drugs, low blood sugar, and other conditions that can cause mental confusion. It also has legal ramifications. If they judge you to be mentally incompetent, your right to make medical decisions for yourself is extinguished, including the right to refuse care (I'm assuming US law here, but most developed countries are similar).\n\nThis assessment has significant impact on the actions they take next. If you fail the test, they'll be wondering if your confusion is a result of injury from the crash or something else. Intoxication is always high on the list of possibilities, and so is low blood sugar. You would likely be asked if you are diabetic at that point, and they would probably do a finger stick to check blood sugar levels no matter what your answer. If your blood sugar is normal then they'll have to assume you've suffered head injury from the crash and expedite you accordingly. The smell of alcohol on your breath or signs of intoxication wouldn't change this course of events because drunks suffer head injuries too.", "Well, this question might get closed as a duplicate, but I'm going to answer it anyway, and try to answer it better. IMO, the suggested duplicate answers a different question, only answering the hydration question too, by side-effect. Personally, I like this question paired with that answer, better than that question.\n\ntl;dr — Alcohol is a diuretic (defined: a substance that promotes the production of urine), causing you to expel more water than the body would normally expel.\n\nThat much has been shown conclusively.\n\n\n If sufficient alcohol is ingested, the diuresis occurs at the expense of all cellular components, and dehydration ensues.\n\n\nRoberts, K. E. Mechanism of Dehydration Following Alcohol Ingestion. 1963. [Abstract (HTML)]\n\nAs far back as the 1930s, researchers were trying to understand whether alcohol—the substance itself—is a diuretic, or indirectly induces chemicals which are diuretic (or which inhibit antidiuretics) or triggers cortical functions that cause diuresis.\n\n\n [Most] writers either state categorically or imply that alcohol per se has no diuretic action. In 1932, however, from a comparison of the diuretic effects of a given volume of water, with and without alcohol, [...] Murray concluded that alcohol itself was exerting a diuretic action. [...] The diuretic action of alcohol has now been demonstrated on five other subjects, and its mode of action investigated [...]\n\n\nEggleton, M. G. The Diuretic Action of Alcohol in Man. 1941. [Full Paper (PDF)]\n\nThe first paper (1963) actually confirmed that alcohol—yes, ethanol itself—inhibits antidiuretic hormones, causing diuresis, causing dehydration. (Caffeine does this too, by the way.)\n\nSo, yeah. That's how that happens.\n\n\n\nUnrelated, but I found this interesting in the second paper...\n\n\n It [the diuresis] is initiated by the increase in blood-alcohol concentration and fails to be maintained if this concentration is kept steady, even at high levels [...] The diuretic response to alcohol differs markedly in one respect from that of the cerebral cortex. The latter is most affected by the rate of increase in blood-alcohol concentration: the greater this rate of increase, the greater the disturbance of function at any absolute concentration. The diuretic response, on the other hand, is dependent mainly on the duration of increasing blood-alcohol concentration and not on the rate of increase (Tables 6, 7). The naturally slow absorber, therefore, tends to give a larger diuretic response than the rapid absorber.\n\n\nThe slower you get drunk, the more dehydrated you'll be!", "Google \"alcohol content of bread\" and you'll see:\n\n\n 1.9%\n Alcohol. However, during the baking process, most of the alcohol in the dough evaporates into the atmosphere. This is basically the same thing that happens to much of the water in the dough as well. And it has long been known that bread contains residual alcohol, up to 1.9% of it. Aug 3, 2017 \n \n www.forbes.com › sites › quora › 2017/08/03 › why-isnt-bread-alcoholic\n Why Isn't Bread Alcoholic? - Forbes\n\n\nThe next time you feed your child a PB&amp;J sandwich, be aware that the bread will contain up to 2% alcohol.\n\nBut also know that one would have to eat a lot of bread to get enough alcohol to have any significant symptoms of drunkenness.\n\nAnd even then it simply wouldn't happen.\nEating bread before drinking is a traditional way of avoiding drunkenness, or at least reducing the peak level of blood alcohol.\nThe alcohol is absorbed by the bread and rather than directly entering the bloodstream (as it would on an empty stomach), it is released slowly over a period of several hours.\n\nChildren have been eating bread for thousands of years without any recorded bad effects from its alcohol content.\n\nBut consider other food products.\nVanilla extract for example is required to have at least 35% alcohol, and it can be much higher than that.\nEven so, no one worries about feeding vanilla flavoured desserts to children.\n\nThat the concentration within that one ingredient is very high doesn't matter.\nIt's the total amount of alcohol in the final product that counts, and no one is ever going to add so much vanilla extract that it would make a significant contribution.\n\nSimilarly with things like marzipan and miso paste.\nIt would be almost impossible for a child to eat sufficiently huge quantities of these products that the total alcohol consumed would be significant.", "The amount of Drunkeness you can have before becoming completely useless depends on your skills and what kind of run you are doing. For the purposes of normal ascensions, your alcohol tolerance runs at about a baseline 15. At and over that, you're face-down in the gutters. You can increase your tolerance by consuming a steel margarita, received from the Azazel in Hell quest.\n\nAvatars of Boris and Zombie Slayers are lightweights, only having a tolerance of 5, while Avatars of Jarlsberg can handle slightly better at 10. Avatars of Sneaky Pete, on the hand, pretty much have two functional livers and have a base tolerance of 20.\n\nNote that these numbers are the levels of Drunkenness at which you become falling-down drunk. The amount of alcohol you can drink and still actually adventure is the aforementioned appropriate number minus 1. So to more clearly illustrate my point:\n\n\nNormal ascension - 14 Drunkenness\nAvatar of Boris/Zombie Slayer - 4 Drunkenness\nAvatar of Jarlsberg - 9 Drunkenness\nAvatar of Sneaky Pete - 19 Drunkenness\nActually Ed - 0 Drunkenness\nconsuming steel margarita - +5 Drunkenness tolerance\nNightcap (Avatar of Jarlsberg skill) - +5 Drunkenness tolerance\nHard Drinker (Avatar of Sneaky Pete skill) - +10 Drunkenness tolerance\nHollow Leg (Skill gained from Sloppy Jalopy) - +1 Drunkenness tolerance\nReplacement Liver (Actually Ed skill) - +5 Drunkenness tolerance", "see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernicke%E2%80%93Korsakoff_syndrome#Alcohol-thiamine_interactions\n\n\n Strong evidence suggests that ethanol interferes directly with\n thiamine uptake in the gastrointestinal tract. Ethanol also disrupts\n thiamine storage in the liver and the transformation of thiamine into\n its active form.[20] The role of alcohol consumption in the\n development of WKS has been experimentally confirmed through studies\n in which rats were subjected to alcohol exposure and lower levels\n thiamine through a low-thiamine diet.[21] In particular, studies have\n demonstrated that clinical signs of the neurological problems that\n result from thiamine deficiency develop faster in rats that have\n received alcohol and were also deficient in thiamine than rats who did\n not receive alcohol.[21] In another study, it was found that rats that\n were chronically fed alcohol had significantly lower liver thiamine\n stores than control rats. This provides an explanation for why\n alcoholics with liver cirrhosis have a higher incidence of both\n thiamine deficiency and WKS.[20]\n\n\n[20] Todd, K. G., Hazell, A. S., &amp; Butterworth, R. F. (1999). Alcohol thiamine interactions: an update on the pathogenesis of wernicke encephalopathy. Addiction Biology, 4, 261-272.\n\n[21] He, X., Sullivan, E. V., Stankovic, R. K., Harper, C. G., &amp; Pfefferbaum, A. (2007). Interaction of thiamine deficiency and voluntary alcohol consumption disrupts rat corpus collosum ultrastructure. Neuropsychopharmacology, 32, 2207-2216.\n\nbut this is of course over a long period.\n\nfor just one instance, there's no scientifical evidence AFAIK", "This is caused by two things.\n\n1)\nWhen you drink with a straw the liquid touches your palate (upper part of your mouth) more, the skin in your palate is thin and strongly circulated (with blood) this accelerates the absorption of alcohol in the blood. \n\n2)\nSucking fluid trough the straw requires a lower than ambient pressure in the lungs and mouth. This lower pressure causes more of the alcohol to evaporate, this alcohol is absorbed by the lungs again increasing alcohol absorption.\n\nWhile drinking with a straw will get you drunk faster it will not necessarily get you more drunk as this is mostly just related to the amount of consumed alcohol.", "Coffee does not include any form of cholesterol, as it is produced in the liver of animals.\n\nHowever, some alcohols in coffee affect how cholesterol metabolizes in human body. Thus, indirectly affects cholesterol levels.\n\nExtraction of these alcohols are mostly related with grounds contact period with water. So, we can say you should take care about the brewing method.\n\nFor example, cold-brew increases the cholesterol levels the most. Drip-brew and instant coffee the least. Turkish coffee increases a lot. French-press increases quite much. Espresso is somewhere in the middle. Pour-over filters are increasing just a little.\n\nMore information", "Alcohol chains are highly volatile and the resulting vapors are detectable by the human olfactory sense as odor. Ethanol is the least detectable, but still registers above chance levels according to the linked study as listed in the abstract which does not require membership/subscription to read, but for ease I will link and quote the abstract:\n\n\n ABSTRACT We explored in humans concentration-detection functions for the odor of the homologous n-alcohols ethanol, 1-butanol, 1-hexanol, and 1-octanol. These functions serve to establish structure-activity relationships, and reflect the pharmacology of the olfactory sense at the behavioral level. We tested groups of 14 to 17 subjects (half of them females), averaging 31 to 35 years old. An 8-station vapor delivery device (VDD8) presented the stimulus under a three-alternative forced-choice procedure against carbon-filtered air. The VDD8 was built to meet the demands of typical human sniffs in a short-term (&lt;5 s) olfactory detection task, and to accurately control odorant generation, delivery, and stability. Actual stimulus concentration was quantified by gas chromatography before and during testing. The functions obtained were log normally distributed and were accurately modeled by a sigmoid (logistic) function, both at the group and at the individual level. Sensitivity to ethanol was the lowest and to 1-octanol the highest. Functions became steeper with increasing carbon chain length. For all alcohols the concentration detected halfway between chance and perfect detection (threshold) was at the ppb (or nM) level. Females were slightly more sensitive than males. Intersubject variability across participants was between one and two orders of magnitude. The present odor thresholds were lower than many reported in the past but their relative pattern across alcohols paralleled that in our earlier data and in compilation studies. A previously described quantitative structure-activity relationship for odor potency holds promise to model thresholds that, like those obtained here, best reflect the intrinsic sensitivity of human olfaction.\n\n\nstudy: alcohol chain odor detection by humans", "Which alcoholic drink can be best regarded as an aphrodisiac?\nWell that will have to depend on the person!\nAlcohol seems to be able to work as an aphrodisiac. However, it is strongly recommended not to have more than a drink or two at most. More than that and any alcoholic drink may have a bad affect on one’s sex life.\n\nEffects in females\nIt increases sexual desire — sort of\nA drink or two may boost arousal, but it’s not a sure bet.\nDrinking alcohol increases testosterone levels in females. This male sex hormone plays a role in sexual desire. It may be a factor in females reporting more sexual desire when drinking.\nThere’s also an element of expectation. People often associate drinking with lowered inhibitions and feeling sexier and more confident. It’s kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy: If you expect to get lucky when you’re drinking, you probably will.\nIt can increase and decrease sexual arousal\nSome females may have more interest in sex when they’ve had a few drinks, but that doesn’t mean their bodies are going to be into it. - Here’s What Happens When You Mix Booze with Sex\n\nMen should make sure not to over drink.\n\nEffects in males\nThe effects of alcohol on males are a bit more straightforward.\nGetting hard might be difficult\nYep, “whiskey dick” is a thing. And it’s not just whiskey that’s to blame. Any alcoholic beverage can do it. - Here’s What Happens When You Mix Booze with Sex\n\nFor the ladies, red wine causes the sex drive to be even more pronounced than with other drinks, at least according to a group of Italian researchers who discovered that the compounds in the wine actually enhance levels of sexual desire in the fairer sex. What the researchers uncovered was that the red wine specifically increased blood flow to women’s erogenous areas, which in turn led to increased levels of desire. The researchers were quick to point out, however, that after more than a drink or two the other effects of alcohol began to take hold, which led to a less pleasurable experience. Moderation, it seems, is key.\nFor those a little more adventurous, here are nine aphrodisiac cocktails to spice up your night:\n\nCasino Royale\nChili Martini\nGinseng Ginger Spritz\nThe Chocolate Rye\nGin cocktail with honey and lemon cordial\nSpiced Manhattan Cocktail\nGingered Peach Margarita\nBrandy Alexander\nMuscadet wine with oysters\n\nAll said and done, there is no one liquor, liqueur, wine or any other alcoholic drink is the best aphrodisiac on the market. However, red wine seems best for the ladies.\nTo enhance the the mood, I would recommend some high end chocolates for the ladies.\nJust keep in mind, that a drink or two seems to be the best. More than that can make the affects of the alcohol in one’s system can backfire.", "High levels of alcohol consumption during pregnancy can be harmful which can develop physical and mental defects in a fetus.\n\nWhen you drink, alcohol passes from your blood through placenta to a baby and can stunt fetal growth, facial deformities, damage neurons and brain structures which can result in intellectual disability and also cause other physical damage. A baby's liver is one of the last organs to develop fully and doesn't mature until the latter stages of pregnancy, so cannot process alcohol. So if you drink at any time during your pregnancy, the alcohol can affect your baby.\n\nWhile the effects attributed to alcohol are still more common in heavier drinkers, they seem to happen at much lower drinking levels than seen in those with FAS.\n\nThe most severe of the alcohol-related conditions (due to heavy drinking) is Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). It causes: \n\n\nProblems with physical and emotional development.\nHyperactivity and poor attention span.\nPoor short-term memory.\n\n\nBaby with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome:\n\n\n\nImage credits: Wiki / Teresa Kellerman\n\n\n Children with FAS have distinct facial features including: small and narrow eyes, a small head, a smooth area between the nose and the lips and a thin upper lip.\n\n\nThey also show the following symptoms:\n\n\nHearing and ear problems.\nMouth, teeth and facial problems.\nWeak immune system.\nEpilepsy.\nLiver damage.\nKidney and heart defects.\nCerebral palsy and other muscular problems.\nHeight and weight issues.\nHormonal disorders.\n\n\nSource: Drinkaware\n\nFASD (Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders) is the umbrella term used to describe the conditions that occur in people who have been diagnosed with some, but not all, of the symptoms of FAS. It is more difficult for a specialist to diagnose FASD than it is FAS, because children with FASD may not have facial deformities. However the following symptoms can show up:\n\n\nLearning difficulties.\nProblems with language.\nLack of appropriate social boundaries (such as over friendliness with strangers).\nPoor short term memory.\nInability to grasp instructions.\nFailure to learn from the consequences of their actions.\nEgocentricity.\nMixing reality and fiction.\nDifficulty with group social interaction.\nPoor problem solving and planning.\nHyperactivity and poor attention.\nPoor coordination.\n\n\n\n\nThe UK's Department of Health recommends that if you're pregnant you should avoid alcohol altogether.\n\nThe National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), which advises healthcare professionals (GPs and nurses), advice pregnant women to:\n\n\nnot to drink alcohol in the first three months of pregnancy, because there may be an increased risk of miscarriage,\nif they choose to drink alcohol while they are pregnant, they should drink no more than one or two units of alcohol, once or twice a week as there is uncertainty about how much alcohol is safe to drink in pregnancy, but if a low level is consumed there is no evidence of harm to an unborn baby,\nif women want to avoid all possible alcohol-related risks, they should not drink alcohol during pregnancy, as the evidence on this is limited.\n\n\nSee also:\n\n\nCan I drink alcohol if I’m pregnant? at NHS\nIs it safe to drink alcohol while breastfeeding? at NHS\nAlcohol in pregnancy at NHS\nFoetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) at Drinkaware\nFetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) at Wikipedia\nFetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) at Wikipedia\nAlcohol misuse at NHS\nAlcohol and drugs during pregnancy at NHS", "I don't think that you will find a definitive answer on this, unfortunately. There are too many factors on an individual basis to make it a blanket kind of projection. The closest that I found for any kind of writeup that addresses it is this published article.\nThe pertinent part of that is this section here:\n\nHow Much Alcohol Must Be Ingested (and over what period) for a Person to Develop Alcohol Dependence and to Be at Risk for Alcohol Withdrawal?\nThere is no absolute relationship between pattern of alcohol use and the risks of physiologic dependence and withdrawal, which most likely reflects the significant number of variables, in addition to duration and quantity of alcohol use, that can contribute to dependence and withdrawal risk for a given individual. Some of these additional variables include age, medical comorbidities (such as hepatic dysfunction), concomitant medication use, and seizure threshold.\nIt has been easier to quantify the risk of benzodiazepine withdrawal, based on degree of benzodiazepine use (even though benzodiazepines act at the same receptor as does alcohol and are cross-reactive with it). For example, daily use of 20 mg of diazepam for 3 weeks or longer is believed to be sufficient to induce physiologic dependence.3 However, the shorter half-life of alcohol (1–2 hours) has made similar predictions elusive in the case of alcohol abuse. In general, any suspicion of daily alcohol use over several weeks or more, regardless of quantity, should raise concern over possible alcohol withdrawal.\n\nSo, while you can make some possible predictions, you may just have to look at the drinking history pattern and project from that, and make preparations for withdrawal symptoms to occur in cases of extended consumption, even if it the first time the patient has consumed in that manner.\nAs far as the preparations, there is this article which addresses the clinical features, assessment and management of AWS (Alcohol Withdrawal Syndrome).", "Sorry, not even close to the first to be that intoxicated and survive with no medical attention. Probably about 100 million people before him over the last 10,000 years got even drunker and survived just fine without medical attention.\n\nIf by \"a bottle\" you mean a 750 ml bottle and he drank half, or 375 ml of it, then he drank about 8.5 \"shots\" (a standard US shot is 44 ml).\n\nI believe this calculator to be as accurate as any calculator can be without a breath or blood sample. Given that he drank 90-proof liquor rather than standard 80-proof whiskey, I told the calculator that he drank 10 shots rather than eight. So when I entered his male gender, 180 pounds, and 10 shots of whiskey in less than half an hour, the calculator says his blood alcohol content would have been approximately .25.\n\nThe table here will give you an idea how drunk .25 is. In short, it's falling down, stupid, puking, blacking out drunk for a novice like your friend. His death would most likely come from falling down a flight of stairs or passing out and choking on his own vomit rather than the alcohol toxicity itself. (With a chronic alcoholic it might not even be obvious they've been drinking.)\n\nMany people reach levels much higher than .25 on a daily basis, receive absolutely no medical treatment, and survive just fine. The long-term prognosis for them isn't so rosy if they keep it up, but a single \"big drunk\" has been survived by millions of people over thousands of years.", "First, the hormonal and hemodynamic changes seen in hangover are distinct from those seen in alcohol withdrawal, so the advice to drink more is not good, even if some symptoms are in fact improved. See tables 2/3 in the cited review.\n\nIt appears the molecular mechanism of veisalgia (HA, a new word) is not well known.\n\n1. acetaldehyde Part of it may be attributed to acetaldehyde but there is clearly more to it. The liver enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase 1 (ADH1) produces acetaldehyde from ethanol, and aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 (ALDH2) makes acetate from that, so the aldehyde does not exist for a long time, and is rather responsible for short-term illnesses.\n\n2. ADH and diuresis\n\n\n Hangover severity is proportional to antidiuretic hormone\n concentration (46). Alcohol inhibits the effect of antidiuretic\n hormone on the kidneys, thereby inducing diuresis that is out of\n proportion to the volume of fluid ingested. As blood alcohol\n concentration decreases and dehydration persists, the serum level of\n antidiuretic hormone increases, maintaining water retention in\n dehydrated patients with hangover. In our clinical experience,\n hydration attenuates but does not completely relieve hangover\n symptoms.\n\n\n3. cytokines\n\n\n The constellation of hangover symptoms (nausea, headache, diarrhea)\n resembles that seen in conditions related to dysregulated cytokine\n pathways (for example, in viral infections and after administration of\n interferon-alpha). Alcohol alters cytokine production through a\n thromboxane pathway. Levels of thromboxane B2 are elevated during\n experimentally induced alcohol hangover (42), and the administration\n of tolfenamic acid, a prostaglandin inhibitor, at the time of alcohol\n consumption has a small prophylactic effect in reducing hangover\n severity (9).\n\n\n4. further substances\n\n\n Congeners, the byproducts of individual alcohol preparations (which\n are found primarily in brandy, wine, tequila, whiskey, and other dark\n liquors), increase the frequency and severity of hangover (24, 39,\n 40). Clear liquors, such as rum, vodka, and gin, tend to cause\n hangover less frequently.\n\n\nSo there are factors that aren't even identified exactly, and these could fit the mixing of drinks observation.\n\nThere are several reviews out there, just search for hangover at Google Scholar.\n\nWiese, Jeffrey G., Michael G. Shlipak, and Warren S. Browner. \"The alcohol hangover.\" Ann Intern Med 132.11 (2000): 897-902. Online at http://dionysus.psych.wisc.edu/lit/topics/Hangover/WieseJ2000a.pdf", "If the beer has not fermented in the 3 weeks since bottling, it's not likely to kick off any time soon. \n\nAssuming that the beer is not excessively high in alcohol, you should add more yeast to the bottles to initiate fermentation. Get yourself a packet of dry yeast (check the manufacture date or expiry date to be sure it's fresh yeast). Uncap the bottles and add a couple grain to each bottle. Then recap. Check after a week.\n\nUPDATE:\nSince the beer is pushing 10% ABV, it's not surprising that the yeast are non-viable. You can still follow this advice, but use Champagne yeast, not beer yeast, as it's more alcohol tolerant.\n\nUPDATE 2:\nWLP002 is described by White Labs as having \"medium\" alcohol tolerance, which could be taken to mean \"around 10%\". The attenuation of your beer is only 65% (110-38/110), which is low for that strain. I'm suspicious that the yeast were knocked out by the alcohol before they finished fermenting all the available sugars. If you add a yeast with high alcohol tolerance to the bottles, you may end up with bottle bombs. \n\nThis is a tricky situation. You might try carefully decanting the bottles into a fermenter and adding Champagne yeast. Let it ferment until finished, then bottle with priming sugar. You take the risk of oxidizing the beer, but I can't think of any other safe way of getting carbonated beer in the bottles. Or, just drink the beer flat and tell people, \"that's how they do it in England.\"\n\nIn the future, pick a yeast strain with high alcohol tolerance when fermenting a huge beast like your imperial stout.", "Not really. In a discussion of the subject on the AHA forum recently, it was brought up that using barrels will increase the \"angel's share\"...the beer that evaporates. But it's such a small amount that it's negligible in terms of increasing the alcohol. Using chips or cubes should have no effect whatsoever.", "There's a six month rule demanding abstinence from alcohol for liver transplants. I can't immediately find evidence of similar rules for other organs, but they might exist.\n\nThere can also be a cooling-off period for plastic surgery, but that's not really a lifestyle test. It's kind of the opposite.", "If you want to test for any alcohol that could theoretically make someone feel the same effects as drinking ethanol-containing drinks, this article indicates that you may need to test for alcohols of many chain lengths between 1 (methanol) and 12 (dodecanol). (It doesn't explicitly say whether or not isopropyl or even straight-chain propyl alcohol causes the effect that is being studied as possibly the main effect of liquor.) \n\nThe quote I'm looking at is\n\n\n With respect to GABA_A receptors, a number of alcohols with different carbon numbers in their backbone (indicated in parenthesis), including methanol (3), butanol (4), hexanol (6), octanol (8), decanol (10) and dodecanol (12), potentiate GABA-gated current. \n\n\nIt's not clear whether they got the names or the numbers wrong for methanol: methanol has only 1 carbon.", "If you aerate well and pitch a large starter, you can go beyond the listed alcohol tolerance. The same goes for going below the listed minimum temperature on ale yeasts.\n\nYou should also try to control fermentation temperature to ensure it doesn't drop during fermentation. If you don't have good temperature control, start the temperature low and it will rise.\n\nIf you start the temperature high it could rise above desirable temperature levels AND drop in temperature as fermentation slows if it's above ambient temperature, the latter of which will likely result in incomplete fermentation and both could result in off-flavors.", "When some one uses “sweet” to describe Blanc de Noir Brut Champagne, what does it really mean?\nSweetness is a way to express the amount of residual sugars to alcohol levels in a wine or champagne.\n\nRough rules of thumb say if a wine's alcohol content is 10% or less it will have sweet characteristics. Wines that are even lower (especially down around 8 or 9 percent) will definitely be sweet. Wines in the 11% to 12.5% ABV range are considered 'off-dry' meaning that there is some notable residual sugar. If it’s 12.5 percent or higher, the wine will will be 'dry' and have little to no perceptible sweetness.\nMost wines under 10% ABV will be sweet. Typically, wines such as German Riesling and Italian Moscato fall in this category. Wines in the range of 10.5% to 12.5% include Riesling's from Austria, Australia and the U.S., Sauvignon Blanc, and Pinot Grigio (a.k.a. Pinot Gris). Then, in the 12.5% to 15.5% range you find Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Sangiovese, Syrah, Grenache and Zinfandel.\nBut, as previously pointed out, a grape that starts with low sugar levels, and ferments to the point where all the sugar is consumed by the yeast, will result in a wine with lower alcohol levels and little to no residual sugar. So, this is why alcohol levels are not a dependable way of determining a wine's sweetness.\nSo, while there’s definitely a loose relationship between a wine’s residual sugar and its alcohol level, it’s not a simple relationship. But you can use the percent alcohol printed on the label as a first indication. - Is There a Relationship Between a Wine's Sweetness and Its Alcohol Level?", "I have not made any cider yet, but there should be no problem in reusing the yeast with one exception: \n\nIf you have so much fermentables that the cider would finish sweet, you have killed the yeast, so that the cake only contains dead yeast (I am thinking of having a potential alcohol level that is higher than what the yeast can tolerate). Most yeasts can tolerate up to 12%, but I have seen yeasts up to 18% and heard of some above that. (Your yeast tolerates up to 18% according to http://www.lalvinyeast.com/strains.asp )\n\nThe downside of reusing the yeast of a wine, mead or cider might be that the yeast is getting stressed by the alcohol. \n\nI suggest that you simply try it and see if you get good results (which is what matters most). If the fermentation doesn't start in a timely fashion you can always pitch some fresh yeast...", "If all other variables are constant then yes.\nIn real life it depends.\nhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3098122/", "No. Coffee is often offered to people perhaps about to pass out so that they will stay awake long enough that they can be kicked out of an establishment. \n\nAlcohol causes dehydration, electrolyte imbalance and taxes the liver. To this extent standard medical treatment is fluid, electrolytes, and vitamins. Caffeine is never used in a medical setting to treat alcohol overdose or withdrawal." ]

[ "Legalism is an ancient Chinese philosophy was originally created by Shang Yang in The Book of Lord Shang. First seen in the Era of Warring States, a period of time in Chinese History marked by violence and war, Legalism, Daoism, Confucianism, and Mohism were each utilized in an attempt to create “social harmony”." ]

[ "Laozi was a Chinese philosopher who created the idea of Daoism. Laozi thought that both Communism and Legalism were a little off with there ideas to.", "What Chinese Philosopher Are You? A philosopher is a person who thinks about the world and wonders, What is the best way to live? In ancient China, there were three popular philosophies, Confucianism, Daoism, and . Legalism. Take the test below and see how much you are in agreement with . Legalism. Legalism", "338 BC) was an important statesman of Qin in the... Legalism -... In Chinese history, Legalism (法家; literally School of law) was one of the main philosophic... Confucianism History. Confucianism used to be the single most significant thing in Chinese life.", "Laozi was a Chinese philosopher who created the idea of Daoism. Laozi thought that both Communism and Legalism were a little off with there ideas to re-create a better society, so he came up with the brilliant idea to combine them. From that, he got the philosophy of Daoism. It wasn't too strict, but it did have a few set rules/guidelines for the people of China to follow.", "Three of the most famous ones were the Confucianism, Legalism, and Daoism. There are many different and similar ideas in these three philosophies. Confucianism has many characteristics and ideas for life and social order. It came from the teachings of a Chinese philosopher named Confucius, or Kongzi.", "Chinese symbol for water Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius. This complex system of thought includes moral, social, political, philosophical, and quasi-religious thought. It has had a considerable influence on the culture and history of East Asia.", "Lao-Tzu (also known as Laozi or Lao-Tze) was a Chinese philosopher credited with founding the philosophical system of Taoism. He is best known as the author of the Tao-Te-Ching, the work which exemplifies his thought.", "Legalism may refer to: In philosophy 1 : Legalism (Chinese philosophy) , Chinese political philosophy based on the idea that a highly efficient and powerful government is the key to social order. 2 Legalism (Western philosophy) , a concept in Western jurisprudence.n philosophy 1 : Legalism (Chinese philosophy) , Chinese political philosophy based on the idea that a highly efficient and powerful government is the key to social order. 2 Legalism (Western philosophy) , a concept in Western jurisprudence.", "He calls Legalism the iron scaffolding of the Chinese Empire, but emphasizes the marriage between Legalism and Confucianism. Chinese law expert Peerenboom compares Han Fei against the accepted standards of legal positivism and concluded that he is a legal positivist.", "Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius. This complex system of thought includes moral, social, political, philosophical, and quasi-religious thought. It has had a considerable influence on the culture and history of East Asia. While it originated in China, it has spread to Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam. Most people who adhere to the teachings of Confucius follow traditional Chinese religion, which blends Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism and traditional local practices and beliefs. The symbol to the left stands for water.", "The Chinese philosophy of Taoism (or Daoism) developed in the latter part of the Chou Dynasty, during a period of turmoil in which it was not clear that Chinese civilization would survive. It represents a naturalistic ideal of how one should live their life. The Basics Founder-The Chinese philosopher Lao Tze.", "Chinese philosophy is the intellectual tradition of the Chinese culture from their early recorded history to the present day. The main philosophical topics... Chinese philosophy is the intellectual tradition of the Chinese culture from their early recorded history to the present day. The main philosophical topics of Chinese philosophy were heavily influenced by the ideas of important figures like Laozi, Confucius, Mencius and Mozi, who all lived during the second half of the Zhou dynasty (8th to 3rd century BCE). Chinese culture as a whole has been shaped by the influence of these intellectual leaders. main Attributes", "Preview — Studies In Chinese Philosophy And Philosophical Literature by A.C. Graham. Studies In Chinese Philosophy And Philosophical Literature. Graham addresses several fundamental problems in classical Chinese philosophy, and in the nature and structure of the classical Chinese language.", "Confucius Biography. Born: c. 551 B.C.E. Tuo, China Died: c. 479 B.C.E. Qufu, China. Chinese teacher and philosopher. The Chinese teacher and philosopher Confucius was the founder of the school of philosophy known as the Ju or Confucianism, which is still very influential in China.", "Law of the People's Republic of China. Law of the People's Republic of China, officially referred to as the Socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics, is the legal regime of China, with the separate legal traditions and systems of Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau. Between 1954 and 1978, there was not very much effort within China to create a legal system.", "Confucius was a Chinese teacher, politician, and philosopher.", "Western name for the Chinese philosopher Kongzi (551-479 B.C.E.). His doctrine of duty and public service had a great influence on subsequent Chinese thought and served as a code of conduct for government officials.(p.", "The origins of Legalist thought are uncertain. Some would date it as far back as the teaching of the 7th century BCE statesman Kuan Chung (d. 645 BCE), prime minister of the state of Ch'i, whose teachings are supposed to be represented by the Kuan-tzu.", "From Past to Present and Present to Past. A short history of Chinese religions.. (The word religion did not enter the Chinese lexicon until the 19th century.) This essay examines Chinese belief systems, which refers to how people think and behave, philosophically and religiously.", "Legalism and the Legalists of Ancient China. Legalism was a philosophy of administration in ancient China. Upon first acquaintance with this system it seems no more than a rationalization by political administrators for their having total political control of their societies.", "Other figures associated with an early form of legalism are Shang Yang (d. 338 BCE), the putative author of The Book of Lord Shang, and Shen Pu-hai (d. 337 BCE).", "Laozi (also Lao-Tzu /ˈlaʊˈdzʌ/ or Lao-Tze, Chinese: 老子; pinyin: Lǎozǐ, lit. Old Master) was an ancient Chinese philosopher and writer. He is known as the reputed author of the Tao Te Ching and the founder of philosophical Taoism, and as a deity in religious Taoism and traditional Chinese religions.", "Legalism, Ancient China. COPYRIGHT 2005 The Gale Group, Inc. LEGALISM, ANCIENT CHINA. Legalism (fa jia ) is a label applied since the second century b.c.e. to a group of Chinese thinkers of the Warring States period (453–221 b.c.e.).", "the philosophical doctrine that the authority of the legal system or of certain laws derives from their justifiability by reason, and indeed that a legal system which cannot be so justified has no authority.", "Legacy of the Qin Dynasty. As mentioned previously, Legalism had a lasting effect on the entirety of Chinese history. The Qin Dynasty created the standard of bureaucratic government and the Legalistic policies first initiated by the Qin are still seen in China today.", "Probable life of the Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu, founder of Taoism and author of the Tao-Te-Ching.", "General Information. Confucianism, the philosophical system founded on the teaching of Confucius (551 - 479 BC), dominated Chinese sociopolitical life for most of Chinese history and largely influenced the cultures of Korea, Japan, and Indochina.eneral Information. Confucianism, the philosophical system founded on the teaching of Confucius (551 - 479 BC), dominated Chinese sociopolitical life for most of Chinese history and largely influenced the cultures of Korea, Japan, and Indochina.", "A Chinese mother and son. Chinese is defined as something relating to China. An example of someone Chinese was the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius. The definition of Chinese is a person or language from China. An example of Chinese is the Mandarin dialect.", "Legalism as a coherent philosophy disappeared largely due to its relationship with the unpopular authoritarian rule of Qin Shi Huang, however, many of its ideas and institutions would continue to influence Chinese philosophy until the end of Imperial rule during the Xinhai Revolution.", "Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature (Suny Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture) Paperback – April, 1991.", ", born in Taiwan, grew up in US, family rooted in mainland China for centuries. 1 Legalism in China is an early form of “rule of law.” Unlike rule of law in the West, which derived from compromise between King and nobles, China’s legalism has its philosophical basis from various thinkers. During the late Spring and Autumn Perio...", "Definition of Confucian. : of or relating to the Chinese philosopher Confucius or his teachings or followers." ]

[ "Child beauty pageants" ]

[ "Yeah they should be honest - it completely changes the dynamic of having children", "That's not a realistic statement of any sort. Positive reinforcement is a good thing that all children need. But to lose a game or fail a test and have that be rewarded teaches children negative lessons. Kids should be disappointed with results they don't want, and they should be taught what to do with that disappointment.", "You should talk like adults and agree on what works best.", "Adults are smart, and always know what to do.", "As long as all participants are legally consenting mentally capable adults participating of their own free will I have no personal issues with Polygamy or Polyandry.\n\nI still have some concerns regarding legal guardianship, inheritance, children, etc, but that's for the courts to decide.", "What \"should\" I do?", "That adults had all the answers and knew what they were doing", "Fighting should be legal if both parties agree", "The moment I looked for an adult in a situation, because I didn't know what to do, and then discovered that I was the adult in this situation", "What I should be doing.\n\nSleeping.", "I don't want children full stop.", "That you should STOP CARING ABOUT KARMA\n\nIf you're doing Reddit for Karma, you're doing it wrong", "As a muslim myself i hate it. What these people do is the complete opposite of what Islam teaches.", "Why do people stop liking things because others do? Never got that", "Because all children should have a home and stability", "Play games while worrying about things I should be doing.", "stressing about things i should do while procrastinating", "what children/grandchildren?", "Marriage offers legal protection in the form of rights/ownership to assets without question, and paternity of children.", "The guest bathroom, I have two teenage children, what do you think.", "Emergency and Disaster Management.\n\nI try to figure out why bad things happen and what we should do about them.", "I think some censorship can be good but the question becomes who decides what should be censored or not?\n\nGenerally I think things that are illegal should be censored but things that are on the line or are controversial should not.", "Realize that there's nothing you can do to stop it. Then try to find something meaningful to do as if it was your last thing to do", "What should I change or do differently starting today?", "#Robots should never look completely human.\n\nWe do not want them to be able to hide among us.", "Children have more empathy to wear masks than most American adult Trump supporters.", "Support them no matter what (as long as it's legal)", "Not very.\n\nMore and more news outlets, speak with emotion and their own opinions, which is complete opposite what news are supposed to and should be shunned.", "This has the same energy of *\"How do you do fellow kids\"* except with adults.\n\n*\"Greetings, adults. Taxes, amirite?\"*", "The average period, generally considered to be about 20–⁠30 years, during which children are born and grow up, become adults, and begin to have children.", "Merlin drowned a ship full of children to keep arthur in power. What is dumbledore gonna do .", "Find what you want to do and do that thing until you get bored and find more thing to do rinse and repeat" ]

[ "A woman by a fence." ]

[ "A woman sitting by a wood fence.", "A woman applies something to a fence.", "A woman is looking for something.", "Women leaning on a metal fence.", "Women standing looking at something.", "A woman and a dog are next to a metal building and a fence.", "Someone is standing behind a fence.", "The woman is standing while another is looking at something.", "The men are painting a metal fence.", "A woman is standing tall while looking for something.", "People are behind a metal fence.", "The person is standing against a fence.", "A person is outside near a fence.", "a woman is looking", "A woman is looking through something", "The woman are looking at something.", "A women is standing outdoors.", "A girl looks through a fence.", "A woman stands behind the fence at the zoo.", "The young people are against a metal fence.", "The woman sees something", "A woman is looking outside.", "There is a fence.", "A female athlete stands next to a fence.", "A woman stands in front of a fence that's blocking an abandoned zone", "A man is riding a bike past a metal fence.", "A woman watches outside", "Men in dresses leaning on a metal fence.", "A woman walks near a fence.", "A hairy woman is standing on a high fence.", "The woman is examining something.", "The woman is looking at something small." ]

[ "Replacing refined sugar with pure, quality maple syrup is likely to yield a net health benefit, but adding it to your diet will just make things worse. Maple syrup is a less bad version of sugar, much like coconut sugar." ]

[ "MOLASSES & CANE SYRUP: These two sweeteners are not precisely the same thing. Molasses is a by-product of sugar refining and cane syrup is simply cane juice boiled down to a syrup, in much the same way as maple syrup is produced.", "Real maple syrup is made from the sap of a maple tree, which has been collected in the woods and then cooked down until it's super thick and syrup and sweet. Fake maple syrup, also known as pancake syrup or imitation maple syrup, is basically maple-flavored sugar.", "Calorie for calorie, maple syrup is a very poor source of nutrients compared to whole foods like vegetables, fruits and unprocessed animal foods. Replacing refined sugar with pure, quality maple syrup is likely to yield a net health benefit, but adding it to your diet will just make things worse.", "The substitution of maple syrup for brown sugar may vary with recipes, but typically 1 cup of white or brown sugar can be replaced with 3/4 cup of maple syrup.", "Paleo and Primal diets avoid refined sugar, but allow natural sugars such as honey and maple syrup. Keto diets tend to rely on “natural” sugar alternatives that are low on the natural glycemic index, such as Swerve, stevia, and monk fruit.", "In baking, replace 1 cup of white sugar with 3/4 cup of maple syrup and reduce by 3 tablespoons the other liquid content in the recipe for every cup of maple syrup used. Because maple syrup is brown and granulated sugar is white, this replacement will darken your baked goods and cause them to brown quicker.", "Vegan Maple Syrup Brands: Mrs. Buttersworth (Light, Original, and Sugar-Free) ... H-E-B/Kroger Generic Maple Syrup (Original/Sugar-Free) Great Value (Walmart) Pure Maple Syrup.", "Putting taste aside, as the two have different flavors — honey is more floral while maple syrup is more woodsy — maple syrup tends to be the healthier choice. From a sugar standpoint, pure maple syrup contains less sugar and less fructose. It is also lower on the glycemic index than honey is.", "MOLASSES & CANE SYRUP: These two sweeteners are not precisely the same thing. Molasses is a by-product of sugar refining and cane syrup is simply cane juice boiled down to a syrup, in much the same way as maple syrup is produced. ... Sorghum tends to have a thinner, slightly sourer taste than cane syrup.", "Trees that can be tapped include: sugar, black, red and silver maple and box elder trees. Of all the maples, the highest concentration of sugar is found in the sap of the sugar maple. Generally the ratio of sap to syrup for the sugar maple is 40 to 1 (40 gallons of sap yields one gallon of syrup).", "Maple syrup comes from the sap of sugar maples, red maples or black maple trees primarily, although other types of maple trees can produce sap that we collect as well.", "A: Real maple syrup is sap from sugar maple trees that's been boiled down to a sugary syrup, so it won't go bad per se. But once the syrup's been opened, spores in the air can cause mold to form on the surface, which is why producers recommend refrigeration.", "Maple (natural) or ms butterworth (corn syrup)? ... Open syrups should be refrigerated, however if opened and kept in a temperant place, the maple will turn to sugar, and the fake crap will stay “almost” forever.", "Summary Combine 1 cup (200 grams) of granulated sugar with 1 tablespoon (15 ml) of maple syrup to make an almost-perfect brown sugar substitute.", "Well, Golden Syrup is essentially just corn syrup. ... It actually might end up being even sweeter than maple syrup as there are different grades to maple syrup, while Golden Syrup is just super concentrated corn sugar flavor.", "1 tablespoon (20 grams) of maple syrup has 52 calories, almost all of which comes from sugar (around 12 grams of sugar).", "['corn sugar.', 'dextrose.', 'fructose.', 'glucose.', 'high-fructose glucose syrup.', 'honey.', 'maple syrup.', 'agave syrup.']", "The paleo plan cuts out all processed, refined sugars, but does allow a few natural sweeteners. The best types to use are grade-B maple syrup, which is 100% pure and distilled naturally, and raw honey, which is again unprocessed, and contains all the nutrients the bees put into it.", "[\"Best Overall: Anderson's Pure Maple Syrup at Amazon. ... \", 'Best Classic: Coombs Family Farms Organic Dark Maple Syrup, Grade A at Amazon. ... ', 'Best Vermont Maple Syrup: Butternut Mountain Farms Vermont Amber Rich Maple Syrup at Amazon. ... ', 'Best Canadian: ... ', 'Best Sugar-Free: ... ', 'Best Organic: ... ', 'Best Tasting:']", "The biggest difference between pure maple syrup and pancake syrup is the list of ingredients. Pure maple syrup is simply maple tree sap that's been boiled down to a thicker consistency. ... Just one ingredient. Pancake syrup, on the other hand, is made with corn syrup and artificial maple extract.", "To substitute maple syrup for honey in a recipe, use 3/4 cup of maple syrup and 1/2 cup sugar for every 1 cup of honey. You can replace molasses with maple syrup in a one-to-one ratio. In each case, both the taste and texture will be affected by the substitution. Maple syrup is thinner than both honey and molasses.", "Golden syrup is a thick, amber-colored form of inverted sugar syrup, made in the process of refining sugar cane juice into sugar, or by treatment of a sugar solution with acid. ... Treacle is any uncrystallised syrup made during the refining of sugar.", "Syrups can be made by dissolving sugar in water or by reducing naturally sweet juices such as cane juice, sorghum juice, maple sap or agave nectar. Corn syrup is made from corn starch using an enzymatic process that converts it to sugars.", "Refined carbs are also known as simple carbs or processed carbs. There are two main types: Sugars: Refined and processed sugars, such as sucrose (table sugar), high fructose corn syrup and agave syrup. Refined grains: These are grains that have had the fibrous and nutritious parts removed.", "Brown sugar adds flavor to desserts and baked goods. It can be substituted for maple sugar, and maple sugar can be substituted for it in recipes. Brown sugar caramelizes much more readily than refined sugar, and this effect can be used to make glazes and gravies brown while cooking.", "To substitute maple syrup for honey in a recipe, use 3/4 cup of maple syrup and 1/2 cup sugar for every 1 cup of honey.", "Even though maple syrup does contain some nutrients and antioxidants, it is also very high in sugar. Calorie for calorie, maple syrup is a very poor source of nutrients compared to whole foods like vegetables, fruits and unprocessed animal foods.", "Butterworth's syrup in Original, Lite, and Sugar Free varieties. Mrs. Butterworth's Original Syrup has that iconic maple flavor you have come to expect from Mrs.", "Honey does contain amino acids while Maple Syrup does not. In a head to head on sugar & calorie content, 1 teaspoon of honey contains 17.3 grams of sugar and 64 calories while 1 teaspoon of maple syrup contains 13.5 grams of sugar and 52 calories.", "Maple syrup — This sweetener comes from tree sap and contains a higher concentration of minerals, such as zinc and manganese, but fewer calories than honey. Maple syrup reduces inflammation and supports the immune system.", "Pure maple syrup from Canada contains vitamins and minerals – at approximately 110 calories per serving (2 tablespoons). It is an excellent source of manganese and a good source of riboflavin. Pure maple syrup is also a source of calcium, thiamin, potassium, and copper.", "No: Avoid for 30 days. Do not consume added sugar, real or artificial. This includes (but is not limited to) maple syrup, honey, agave nectar, coconut sugar, date syrup, monk fruit extract, stevia, Splenda, Equal, Nutrasweet, and xylitol. If there is added sugar in the ingredient list, it's out." ]

[ "What are you asking...something for wedding invitations?!\\n\\nOn the face of it: \\n\\n(1) I wouldn't call an uncle and niece to be called a domestic relationship;\\n\\n(2) I wouldn't call an uncle and niece to be called a social relationship;\\n\\n(3) none of the above.\\n\\nI would call a situation, in which--say--2 spinsters have been living together for years, a civil union\\n\\nI'm inferring \"domestic\" in your sense means they are living together, having no children together" ]

[ "Your mother.\\n\\nThat's the closest relationship. She could also be your uncle's wife.", "This is a pretty vague question in itself. The type of relationship is a pretty open variable. The way I see it, relationships differ on a scale. On one end you have the casual relationship and on the other you have the 'serious' relationship. And the scale is based on pretty much two things: Appearances (physical attraction) and wit (personality) If you're talking about a pretty casual relationship then there would be an emphasis on appearances. And on the same token, the serious relationship has an emphasis on wit. But there must be at least a combination of both. Look at it this way: How fun would a teeter-totter be if you just sat in one end and had no one on the other end?", "Wow, weird how many people jump to this being incest and going on about the DNA problems. There is no incest here people!!!\\n\\nMary Jones marries John smith\\nMarys mom (betty) marries John smiths Son (paul)\\n\\nNo blood ties there at all between the two different sexual unions. The only relationship is through marriage.\\n\\nIf both couples have a girl (for ease lets say sally and jane) then I think that would make them each others cousin, niece and aunt.\\n\\nSally would be pauls sister and so the aunt to any offspring of pauls. This also makes any offspring of her brother pauls her niece or nephew (obviously). Jane is marys sister and so the same is true, she will be aunt to any of marys offspring hence we have the relationship Aunt and niece for both children to each other. They are also however the grandchildren of each couple. Jane is the grandchild of Mary and John and sally is the grandchild of Betty and paul and since the only relationship I can think of between grandchildren normally is cousins I think this term applies here as well.", "Very long and touched. It sounds like u missed your Uncle. I can see that you and ur uncle developed a good relationship. He is with you in spirit and watching u write a poem .. He is with you!", "I think, in general, men are more prone to express homophobia...\\n\\n... but, more men look at hard core porn- which would be \"softcore\" if it were just a chick alone!\\n\\nSo they're looking at other men, in sexual situations, and getting aroused.\\n\\nSame thing for guys who actually act it out (those in swinger type relationships or who like to watch their wives with other men). In some of those alternate relationships, the men interact with eachother to varying degrees, but still consider themselves heterosexual. This might also happen in some types of BDSM relationships. \\n\\nIn short, I think expressed homophobia is a social thing and a social label.", "An interpersonal relationship is social relationship or connection between two or more people. \\n\\nExample:\\nKinship relationships, including family relationships, being related to someone else by blood (consanguinity), e.g. fatherhood, motherhood; or through marriage (affinity), e.g. father-in-law, mother-in-law, uncle by marriage, aunt by marriage.", "Look in the Family Relationship section. It is a sub-heading called Other- love and romance.", "The key word in your question is just. If this is the only thing holding the relationship together then there is no personal relationship. The couple has already become two individuals and is no longer a couple. Physical separation is minor in comparison to the mental and emotional separation which has already taken place.\\nSad that children are involved, but sadder yet if they do not physically separate and become nightmare examples of human interaction.", "There is no English word for it. It's what what you are to the Godfather of your child and vice versa. People can also call each other this if they feel a special, close bond- like \"uncle Johnny\" who isn't a biological uncle.", "Both are mandatory. Ignoring each of them may cause a tragedy but it depends on the kind of people involved and what they are looking for in a relation.", "None of the above! The role of the family in society is to exemplify the family unit, as it applies to society. Each person in the family represents a unique character, (or personality), that has individual traits separate from the others in this family unit and, as such, has different requirements. These differences, if and when perceived properly, \"should\" cause all family members to learn how to get along with each other. When one or more members refuse to get along, there is strife in the unit.\\n(This is the short of it!)\\nNow, apply this family unit to the broader unit of society... it's the same, only larger. Learning from each other and how best to help one another should be the goal, if you're wise enough to comprehend this, else there's strife in one form or another!\\nThank You (Whew!)", "I would advise against this myself. Cheating is cheating, and it would not be fair for your partner.\\n\\nI think you really need to consider what you need/want in a relationship. If you really want this, talk to your partner about having an open (or semi-open) relationship. Otherwise, you are not being fair to him.", "Yes, I agree.\\n\\nGood relationships, whether personal or societal are an EXCHANGE of power.\\n\\nBad ones are when the exchange is unequal.", "Social health is the process of creating and maintaining healthy relationships through the choices we make. The ability to interact well with people and to have satisfying interpersonal relationships is important to social health.", "That's a difficult question.\\nThere are levels of closeness.\\nMy sister... yes, I'd rat her out if I had to.\\nMy daughter.... never. If I had to take the blame for her I would, but never rat her out.", "I guess you should consider the context. It could be sexual in nature. (for ex..daddy, spanking etc.. you get the picture) I dont know who said it first but i bet its been out there for a while... In the south I've heard old folks ask that of young people, to figure out who's their kin. \"boy, who's your daddy? I'm sure that 1st example is mostly used and recognized.", "If it's platonic, of course. If you expect your woman to spend all her time in a nunnery when you're away you're going to have miserable relationships.", "Some people feel that they are getting too attached too quickly because they had just ended a relationship or they are afraid of a one way street commitment... in this case, I would just ask him what he thinks of the relationship. Does he consider you guys friends or dating... sometimes you have to put the question on the table and cut out the bullcrap", "There were also many, many other children born on the same day as your child. Why should her spirit have necessarily come into yours, and not one of those many others? I think that's part of where you uncle is wrong. \\n\\nSecondly, people's spirits do not linger around this earth. So in that sense, your uncle is completely wrong. Once a person dies, their spirit (or soul) goes either to heaven or hell. This depends on whether they had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and accepted Him as their Savior and Redeemer. If they did, then their soul has gone on to heaven. If not, then they're in hell. I don't believe that a suicide automatically goes to hell. It is all still dependent on the relationship with Jesus. \\n\\nAs for your son, don't worry about what your uncle said. It is superstition to believe that a dead person's spirit would linger around and inhabit the body of a new child. What would the purpose of that be??? Just put your trust in Jesus Christ, and He'll reveal to you the truth.", "I'm assuming you meant wife or mistress...\\n\\nI think that would depend on the women involved.\\nWithout knowing that, how are we supposed to answer?", "In my family we sometimes call them nieces/nephews. Which is kinda weird but I don't mind.", "You have to keep in mind that \"cheating\" is defined by the people involved. A better question would be \"does she consider it cheating?\" or \"Based on what I have told her regarding the status of our relationship (whether or not we are exclusive, or exclusive to the sex of the person - no more than 1 gf or 1 bf, or whatever you all have discussed) would she consider it cheating?\" She may or may not. She is who you should be asking, only she can decide. By definition monogamy is one person, not one person - per sex. So if she feels you are in a monogamous relationship, you may need to redefine what your relationship is. Your relationship, both of you could decide, is really where you all do whatever you want with guys however are faithful to each other. It is, what you both can agree that it is. Honesty is always the best policy.", "Ultimately, the only person that can answer that is you and your spouse. If they continue to be unfaithful, there is an underlying reason to their actions. If in fact the two of you wish to salvage the relationship, talk to the other and find their real feelings. Perhaps the other is doing this because hey are addicted to sex. If this is the case, maybe you can consider stepping up the sex life. If the other simply enjoys the feeling of being with someone else, perhaps you can consider opening the relationship to allow a third part to join the relationship from time to time. Consider all options before you make a choice as in relationships when we make a move the piece is sometime difficult if not impossible to move back. I hope this helps….\\n\\n-Jerry", "If you are considering another relationship with her then maybe marriage counselling would be a first step. If you can get through that then I might consider trying again but obviously there were serious issues that warranted the divorce to begin with.", "No that's called a Rival. But that can also form a strong bond that can sometime develope into friendship.", "Yes it is normal to want to socialize with friends jealousy and over possessiveness will harm any relationship", "Sounds to me like a case of\"can't live with each other,can't live without each other\".", "I could forgive but I wouldn't stay with someone who had cheated on me. A good relationship has to be based on trust and love. Without the strong foundation of trust, the relationship will crumble. After someone has cheated you would always have to wonder and worry. Each time they were late, or didn't call, or acted differently you would wonder if they were cheating again. You can't have a good, loving, trusting relationship under those circumstances. I would also strongly doubt their love for me if they cheated. If someone truly loves you, then they wouldn't want to cheat on you. In their mind there would be noone better than you and they wouldn't risk the relationship with you for something as superficial as sex with someone they aren't in love with.", "This depends on which side the aunt is related on. \\nUmtee if the aunt is your father's sister\\nKhatlee if the aunt is your mother's sister. \\n(spelled phonetically)\\nThis also applies to uncles\\nUmee would be your father's brother\\nKhalee would be your mother's brother", "It's a social science; perhaps you might have a notion of it and other similar social sciences (philosophy, economics) not being a science due to a contrast between it and a physical science (physics, biology). Social sciences deal with relationships between people and the world.", "If you want a relationship to work long-term, each person needs to have a life outside of their relationship. However, you need to be able to trust the person you are with. It sounds like you have some reasons why you don't feel like you can trust him. If that's the case, you need to consider if this is the relationship you want to be in.", "The closest I can get is 'maternal aunt-like'!\\n\\nGood Q." ]

[ "Organisers said turnout was 510,000, while police said about 98,600 took part during the peak of the march.\nThe annual rally, marking the day Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, was to demand full electoral freedom.\nIt came after an unofficial referendum on how to choose Hong Kong's next chief executive drew close to 800,000 votes.\nChina says it will introduce universal suffrage for the 2017 election - but wants the final say over who can run.\nThe Hong Kong government said the 10-day referendum had no legal standing.\nWhile organisers put the number of those joining Tuesday's rally from Victoria Park to the city's Central district at more than half a million, the University of Hong Kong's public opinion programme estimated a turnout of between 154,000 and 172,000.\nThe organisers' figure would make the march the largest since 2004, when 530,000 were estimated to have taken part in a pro-democracy demonstration.\nThe annual 1 July rally first gained prominence in 2003, when half a million people demonstrated against proposed anti-subversion laws which were later scrapped.\nRoads around Victoria Park were closed off and footage showed key roads jammed with marchers.\nReports said protesters were still in the park as the first marchers arrived in the Central district four hours later, giving an idea of the scale of the rally.\nSecurity was tight, with about 4,000 police officers on patrol.\nAfter the march, hundreds of protesters staged a sit-in in the Central district. Police said the sit-in was \"unauthorised\" and began removing some of the participants in the early hours of Wednesday.\nSome demonstrators linked arms in a bid to resist being moved.\nAt the scene: Juliana Liu, BBC News, Hong Kong\nChanting \"genuine democracy\" and \"CY Leung step down\", tens of thousands braved the heat and rain to march for full voting rights.\nCY Leung, the current chief executive, was elected in 2012 by a committee of just 1,200 members, who were believed to be largely loyal to the Chinese government. The protesters fear that in 2017 the shortlist of candidates to replace him will selected by a similar group, making universal suffrage essentially meaningless.\nBut that is exactly what is likely to happen, unless there is some kind of compromise.\nA senior Hong Kong government official told reporters recently that the next chief executive must be appointed by Beijing.\nSpeaking earlier at a ceremony to mark the 17th anniversary of the former British colony's return to China, Hong Kong leader CY Leung said that the government was trying hard to forge a consensus on political reform.\n\"Only by maintaining Hong Kong's stability can we sustain our economic prosperity. Only by sustaining Hong Kong's prosperity can we improve people's livelihoods,\" Mr Leung said.\nThe unofficial referendum, organised by campaign group Occupy Central, allowed the public to decide which of three proposals - all of which involved allowing citizens to directly nominate candidates - to present to Beijing.\nHong Kong was handed back to China in 1997 following a 1984 agreement between China and Britain.\nChina agreed to govern Hong Kong under the principle of \"one country, two systems\", where the city would enjoy \"a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defence affairs\" for 50 years.\nAs a result, Hong Kong has its own legal system, and rights including freedom of assembly and free speech are protected." ]

[ "Pro-democracy protests erupted into a major street campaign on Sunday. Protesters want Beijing to scrap rules allowing it to vet candidates for Hong Kong's top job in the 2017 polls.\nMost Chinese language papers in the mainland have criticised the protest, calling it an \"illegal assembly\". The papers, however, have refrained from publishing photographs or giving details.\nDescribing the gathering as \"unlawful\" and \"unauthorised\", a report in the English edition of the China Daily mentions that the police fired tear gas on protestors.\nThe paper's editorial calls the protest an \"opportunistic adventure\", and blames the Occupy Central group for using the students to threaten Hong Kong's \"economic well-being and social stability\".\n\"Realising their failure to summon residents' support for their cause, the 'Occupy' organisers are trying to take advantage of the students' idealism and enthusiasm for promoting democratic advancement in the city,\" says the daily.\nThe paper adds that the protesters have a \"political agenda\".\n\"By knowingly putting young students in jeopardy, 'Occupy' organisers demonstrate a desperate attempt to advance their political agenda, even at the expense of the safety of innocent people… the political extremists in the city have completely exposed the opportunistic nature of their endeavours,\" it points out.\nThe English edition of the Global Times reports that the police have shown \"restraint in handling demonstrators\". The editorial criticises the \"street movement\", adding that it is ruining Hong Kong's image.\n\"As Chinese mainlanders, we feel sorrow over the chaos in Hong Kong on Sunday. Radical opposition forces in Hong Kong should be blamed,\" says the paper.\nIt goes on to criticise some US media outlets for \"linking the Occupy Central movement with the Tiananmen Incident in 1989\".\n\"By hyping such a groundless comparison, they attempt to mislead and stir up Hong Kong's society. China is no longer the same nation it was 25 years ago. We have accumulated experience and drawn lessons from others, which help strengthen our judgment when faced with social disorder,\" it says.\nThe paper also asks the Hong Kong government to \"take actions to resume order in response to the damage the radical forces caused to society\".\n\"The central government must firmly support the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in taking resolute action against radical activities, including drawing the red line of Hong Kong's rule of law. It must be made clear that there is no uncertainty over political reform in Hong Kong,\" it warns.\nAn article by Wang Qiang, a professor at the College of Armed Police, on Sohu news portal suggests \"the armed police\" can be mobilised to handle the situation if the law enforcers in Hong Kong \"do not have the ability to do so\".\nIn contrast to the limited reporting in China's press, media outlets in Hong Kong are giving prominent coverage to the protests.\nPro-Beijing media outlets have urged the students to end their protest, while independent outlets are scathing in their criticism of the government.\nPro-Beijing Sing Tao Daily blames the Occupy Central activists for pushing Hong Kong to dangerous ground.\n\"The conflict is not only affecting the financial district area, but all regions and industries are affected. These activists should bear the responsibility,\" warns the paper.\nIn an emotionally-charged editorial, the popular pro-democracy Apple Daily tells the \"heartless\", \"tyrannical\", \"unreasonable\" regime to \"get lost\" after police fired tear gas and pepper spray on the protesters.\n\"What mistakes have the people committed? They were only speaking up for the students and protecting them as they could not bear to see the authorities bullying them,\" it says.\n\"People have lost hope in this government that has been elected by a small group of people. We know that the determination of the people and students to fight for democracy will never be weakened,\" it says.\nThe Ming Pao daily, known as an intellectual paper in Hong Kong, subtly criticises the protesters for \"not realising their promise\" of a \"non-violent protest\" based on the \"ideal of love and peace\", while noting that the police should have refrained from using tear gas on the protesters.\n\"Up to this stage, perhaps the authorities should consider what is best for Hong Kong. For example, having a temporary freeze on the political reform discussions and wait until the second round of consultation,\" suggests the editorial.\nAnd finally, an article in the South China Morning Post shines some optimism.\n\"But perhaps there is an even simpler reason for optimism: this generation of students who have, again and again, showed their willingness to stand up and speak truth to power. If they are indeed the leaders of tomorrow's Hong Kong, we can still hope for change,\" says the article.\nBBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. For more reports from BBC Monitoring, click here. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook.", "Pro-independence elected lawmakers Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching have refused to pledge allegiance to Beijing when being sworn in.\nBeijing has now interpreted a section of Hong Kong law to mean any official who does not swear the oath properly cannot take office, said state media.\nThe move comes after weeks of chaos in the Hong Kong legislature.\nThere were also protests, and some scuffles, in Hong Kong on Sunday night, with at least four arrests.\nHong Kong's Chief Executive CY Leung said his government would \"fully implement\" the ruling.\nHong Kong is semi-autonomous under the \"one country, two systems\" framework in place since it was returned to China in 1997.\nBut its mini constitution, the Basic Law, states Beijing still has the final say in how to interpret its laws.\nFor Hong Kong's democracy movement, China's intervention is a challenge to freedom of expression and judicial independence, but for Beijing the bigger picture is paramount.\nAll talk of independence is seen as threatening and elsewhere in China, separatism is a crime and campaigning for independence results in a lengthy jail term.\nTo allow elected members of Hong Kong's legislature to use such a high-profile public platform to insult China and talk of a Hong Kong nation was unthinkable.\nHong Kong's courts do still uphold the freedoms promised when Britain handed the territory back to China nearly two decades ago.\nBut this intervention from Beijing is a reminder that China is determined to decide the limits of those freedoms.\nThe question for Hong Kong's young democracy activists now is where to take their defiance next.\nThe interpretation by Beijing's rubber-stamp parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC), marks Beijing's most far-reaching intervention in Hong Kong since the handover.\nMr Leung and Ms Yau belong to the Youngspiration party, which sprang from the 2014 Occupy Central pro-democracy protests. They have called for Hong Kong to break away from China entirely.\nThey were elected in September, and have attempted to take their oaths several times, but each time have provocatively changed the wording.\nTheir attempts included using a variation of a derogatory word for China, and displaying a pro-independence banner.\nTheir oaths were invalidated amid chaotic scenes in the Legislative Council (LegCo).\nChina's intervention came before a local court could issue its own ruling on whether the pair could be sworn in again.\nThe Beijing ruling states that lawmakers taking their oaths must do so \"sincerely and solemnly\". They must \"accurately, completely and solemnly\" read out the portion of the oath that swears allegiance to Beijing, it said.\nFailure to do so would disqualify the lawmaker from taking office.\nWhile it does not name them, the ruling effectively means Mr Leung and Ms Yau will not be allowed to take their seats.\nA spokesman for Beijing's state council was quoted by Xinhua as saying the move was \"absolutely necessary\", and \"complies with the common aspiration of the entire Chinese people\" including those in Hong Kong.\nLi Fei, deputy secretary of China's top legislative panel, warned there would be \"no obscurity and no leniency\" in Beijing's \"firm and clear attitude towards containing and striking the Hong Kong independence forces\".", "Localists champion greater autonomy for Hong Kong, and protection against what they see as the dilution of the city's identity amid growing social and political influence from mainland China.\nBut what is it that has made them so angry?\nThe localist movement is driven primarily by two loose groups - Hong Kong Indigenous and Civic Passion - which grew in strength in the aftermath of the 2014 pro-democracy protests, staging demonstrations and fielding candidates in political races.\nThough Hong Kong has many pro-democracy groups, localists and their supporters are known for favouring direct action and not shying away from confrontation with authorities.\nSing Ming, a politics professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, says localists tend to be young people who cherish their Hong Kong identities, as well as those who face economic difficulties.\nGovernment figures show that about 960,000 out of Hong Kong's population of 7.2 million live below the poverty line, making it the 12th most unequal place in the world.\nThere is a sense among localists that the government has failed to address the needs of the poor.\nMr Sing says some localists are \"extremely dissatisfied\" with the government's handling of this, and \"may even think that the policies are the results of collusion between government and business\".\nItinerant street hawkers, in particular, are seen as one symbol of the income gap as their trade has traditionally been seen as a way out of poverty.\nBut the government stopped issuing new licences in 1970s, and has conducted increasingly strict crackdowns on illegal hawking due to food safety and obstruction concerns, as was the case in Mong Kok.\nSome localists believe these moves happened because of political pressure from property developers, who regard hawkers as a nuisance and eyesore.\nMeanwhile, shop rents have grown increasingly expensive, which means food vending is now a dying trade. Many people believe the poor are being deprived of one legitimate means of income.\nBut some also see the clearances of illegal hawkers, as happened in Mong Kok, as a failure by the government to recognise how integral they are to local culture, and a sign that the government has grown out of touch with ordinary Hong Kongers' desire to preserve their unique identity and freedoms.\nHong Kong Polytechnic University lecturer Leung Chi-yuen, who has been studying hawkers for a decade, says the issue has become a \"powder keg\" in Hong Kong in recent years.\n\"The government has underestimated the socio-political environment,\" he says, and if it decides to further crack down \"it will bring unforeseeable consequences\".\nPolitically, the current government, under Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, is widely seen as pro-Beijing, a view that was reinforced by the crackdown on the 2014 pro-democracy protests.\nIncidents such as the disappearance of five Hong Kong booksellers associated with a shop known for selling books critical of the mainland have only enhanced the perception that the city's freedoms are being eroded.\nFormer head of the civil service, Joseph Wong Wing-ping, notes that the government has been dismissive of its unpopularity and has pressed on with controversial decisions, such as its appointment of a pro-Beijing figure to chair a local university despite fervent opposition.\nWhat happened in Mong Kok \"may just be the beginning\" of more violence to come, he says.\nThe perception of many localists is that after the collapse of the peaceful Umbrella Movement, more direct action is needed.\nTwo of the founders of key localist group Hong Kong Indigenous, Edward Leung and Ray Wong, told BBC Chinese last year that they regarded the Umbrella Movement as a \"complete and utter\" failure.\nMr Wong said that during the 2014 protests, \"I saw with my own eyes the police inflicting unacceptable violence on unarmed citizens, releasing tear gas.\"\nHe added that the \"use of force to prevent violence [from police]\" was justified in order for protesters to protect themselves and others.\nBoth were at the protests in Mong Kok. Mr Leung has already been charged with rioting and in a Facebook post on Thursday, Mr Wong said he expected to be arrested soon.\n\"Once Hong Kong was the land of the Hongkongers, but as I grew older, I noticed that it is no longer the case,\" he said, saying he had gone to Mong Kok to protect the market.\n\"There are going to be more protests. But I urge you, my fellow Hongkongers, to persist.\"", "The former British colony became a special administrative region of China in 1997, when Britain's 99-year lease of the New Territories, north of Hong Kong island, expired.\nHong Kong is governed under the principle of \"one country, two systems\", under which China has agreed to give the region a high degree of autonomy and to preserve its economic and social systems for 50 years from the date of the handover.\nBut Beijing can veto changes to the political system, and pro-democracy forces have been frustrated by what they see as the slow pace of political reform.\nHong Kong profile - home\nRead more country profiles\nCountry profiles compiled by BBC Monitoring\nElectoral reform is a particularly sore point. Currently, half the territory's legislature is not directly elected, but chosen by professional and corporate groups that favour Beijing loyalists.\nThe territory's chief executive is indirectly elected by an electoral college effectively controlled by Beijing.\nChina has pledged to allow the chief executive to be elected by direct universal adult suffrage by 2017, but wants all candidates to be chosen by a nominating committee.\nPro-democracy activists say the public should be involved in deciding who can stand. Beijing worries this could undermine its control over the territory.\nTensions spilled over into mass protests in the city centre in September 2014, with calls for full democracy and the resignation of Chief Executive CY Leung, and the territory's Legislative Council rejected the proposed changes the following year.\nChina controls Hong Kong's foreign and defence policies, but the territory has its own currency and customs status.\nHong Kong's economy has moved away from manufacturing and is now services-based. The region is a major corporate and banking centre as well as a conduit for China's burgeoning exports. Its deepwater port is one of the world's busiest.\nCompanies based in Hong Kong employ millions of workers in the neighbouring Chinese province of Guangdong.\nChina ceded Hong Kong island to Britain in 1842 after the First Opium War. Britain later added parts of the Kowloon peninsula and the many smaller islands surrounding Hong Kong to its holdings.\nIn the 19th and 20th centuries Hong Kong's population was boosted by the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants from China, many of whom were fleeing domestic upheavals.\nIndustrialisation gathered pace, and by the 1970s Hong Kong had become an \"Asian tiger\"; one of the region's economic powerhouses.\nWith little room for expansion across its hilly terrain, high-rise Hong Kong has among the highest population density in the world - about 6,300 people per square kilometre.\nSkyscrapers and temples, shopping malls and traditional markets sit cheek-by-jowl. But amid the urban hustle there are quiet parks and green spaces, beaches and mountain-top views.", "Speaking to BBC Newsnight, Lord Patten said the UK had let down \"a generation\" of democracy activists.\nIt is 20 years since Hong Kong was returned to China after more than a century of British rule.\nThe UK government says it takes its commitments to Hong Kong seriously.\nAnson Chan, former Hong Kong chief secretary - who worked as Lord Patten's deputy - also expressed deep concern about China's behaviour towards Hong Kong.\nCiting the example of the alleged kidnapping by China of five booksellers and other rights abuses, she told BBC Newsnight that the \"one country, two systems\" form of rule itself is under threat.\n\"Unfortunately the rest of the world - particularly Great Britain - would rather pretend not to see what is going on,\" she said.\n\"If they continue to ignore this steady erosion, by the time they wake up to the fact that 'one country, two systems' exists only in name, it will be too late.\"\nIn the 1980s the Chinese and British leadership agreed that Hong Kong would be guaranteed certain freedoms not enjoyed in the rest of China - freedom of press, freedom of assembly and a partially-elected law-making council.\nThis principle, known as \"one China, two systems\", was a part of the Sino-British joint declaration - an international agreement guaranteeing Hong Kong those freedoms after the handover.\nLord Patten said the UK government has not \"manifestly stood up for Hong Kong\".\n\"I wonder what has happened to our sense of honour and our sense of responsibility - particularly in Britain. It's above all a British question,\" he said.\n\"We signed the joint declaration with China. It's a treaty at the UN. It's supposed to commit us to standing up for Hong Kong's rights until 2047.\"\n\"And you don't get much sense of the British government actually standing over those promises and obligations and I think that's a great pity.\"\nLord Patten said the UK risks putting its desire to do trade with China, over its commitment to Hong Kong.\n\"It's all for derisory, ludicrous reasons,\" he said. \"The argument that the only way you can do trade with China is by kowtowing to China on political issues is drivel - it's complete nonsense.\"\n\"I worry about how people are prepared to sell our honour for alleged trade deals which never actually happen. I think that that would be calamitous. And what do we represent to the world if that's what happens?\"\nIn 2015, five publishers selling critical articles about the Chinese leadership disappeared, only to reappear in detention in the mainland.\nOne bookseller was thought to have been abducted while in Hong Kong. Four of the publishers - including a British passport-holder - were eventually returned to Hong Kong. One Swedish national remains in Chinese detention.\nTens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Hong Kong in 2014 in what came to be known as the \"Umbrella Protests\". The protests lasted several weeks, and captured the world's attention, but failed to achieve any concessions from Beijing.\n\" I feel very strongly that we let down the parents of this generation of democracy activists. I think it would be a tragedy if we let down these kids as well,\" Lord Patten said.\nA Foreign Office spokesperson said: \"The UK takes our longstanding commitment under the Sino-British Joint Declaration very seriously.\"\n\"We believe that 'one country, two systems' continues to be the best arrangement for Hong Kong's long term stability and prosperity, as it has been for nearly 20 years.\n\"We hope and expect that 'One Country Two Systems' will be respected and successful long into the future.\"\nThe spokesperson added: \"We regularly discuss the importance of respect for 'one Country, two Systems' and Hong Kong's high degree of autonomy with the Chinese Government. The Foreign Secretary made this clear to his Chinese counterpart when they met in London in December.\"\nMore on this story on BBC Newsnight at 22:30 on BBC Two", "Sir Richard Ottoway, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, accused the Chinese authorities of acting in an \"overtly confrontational manner\".\nHis committee is examining relations between the UK and its former colony, where pro-democracy activists have been protesting since September.\nThe demonstrators want elections free from interference by Beijing.\nSir Richard said he had been warned that if he and fellow MPs attempted to travel to Hong Kong as part of the inquiry they would be refused entry.\n\"The Chinese government are acting in an overtly confrontational manner in refusing us access to do our job,\" he stated.\nSir Richard added that he would request an emergency Commons debate on the issue.\nHe told the BBC the committee intended to explore business, cultural and educational links between the UK and China, as well as the protests.\n\"We are not China's enemies. We are friends and partners. We have every intention of going there in a sensible way,\" he said.\nSir Richard added: \"The real worry about this is that it sends a signal about the direction of travel that China is going on Hong Kong. Immigration is a devolved matter to the Hong Kong authorities, and it's not for China to ban them.\"\nThe committee will continue with the probe, he said.\nA spokesperson for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said the committee was independent of government and described the Chinese decision to refuse members entry as \"regrettable\".\nThe spokesperson added: \"It is not consistent with the positive trend in UK-China relations over the past year, including the recognition during Premier Li's visit to London in June that the UK and China have considerable shared interests in respect of Hong Kong.\n\"Nor is it in the spirit of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, concluded 30 years ago. The FCO has signalled this position to the Chinese at the most senior levels.''\nChinese authorities condemned the committee's inquiry when it was announced in September.\nThe Chinese Foreign Affairs Committee charged its UK counterpart with carrying out a \"highly inappropriate act which constitutes interference in China's internal affairs\".\nBut when the Commons committee took evidence from Lord Patten, the former governor of Hong Kong, earlier this month, he criticised British politicians for not doing enough to support democracy there.\nLord Patten said the terms of the 1984 Joint Declaration between the UK and China, agreeing the transfer of sovereignty to China and setting out a \"one country, two systems\" principle of governance, explicitly gave the UK a \"legitimate\" interest in Hong Kong's future.\n\"When China asserts that what is happening in Hong Kong is nothing to do with us, we should make it absolutely clear both publicly and privately that it is not the case,\" he said.", "In his first annual policy address since last year's pro-democracy protests, Mr Leung said the need for economic growth outweighed calls for greater democracy.\nHe also criticised the Undergrad, an official publication of Hong Kong University Students' Union, for advocating Hong Kong's independence.\nThe Global Times dismisses the magazine article as \"nonsense\". It says mainstream society has ignored these independence activists, but \"it is not impossible for them to become one of the major problems facing Hong Kong and become a tool for external forces\".\n\"Both the central government and Hong Kong should figure out how to punish those who propagate talk of independence,\" it urges.\nPraising Mr Leung for slamming the students, Hong Kong-based pro-Beijing Ta Kung Pao daily says that the idea of \"Hong Kong independence\" is a \"time bomb\" that needs to be eliminated.\n\"The advocacy for independence is not simply about freedom of speech or an academic question. It is the root problem for Hong Kong society, a bomb that is hurting social stability and development. There must be a strong social force to stop and get rid of it,\" warns the article.\nThe Apply Daily, however, disagrees and criticises the policy address.\nThe pro-democracy paper describes Mr Leung as \"shameless\" for not resigning from his post and instead staying on to \"threaten\" the students.\n\"There should not be off-limit boundaries in academic discussions… What is the big deal in talking about the issue of independence when students are discussing about Hong Kong's constitution?\" the paper asks, pointing out that the Hong Kong government is suppressing the students' freedom of speech.\nIn a milder tone, the popular Ming Pao daily criticises Mr Leung for targeting the students instead of seeking ways to resolve the political stalemate.\nElsewhere, papers criticise Japan for its \"lack of sincerity\" after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's cabinet approved a record-high defence budget.\nJapan announced the 4.98 trillion yen ($42bn; £27.5bn) defence budget on Wednesday, a few days after Beijing and Tokyo held maritime talks.\nA commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily recalls that both countries seemed to have reached a consensus to improve ties and their defence officials met for talks earlier this week.\n\"There seems to be a thaw in ties since September 2012. So when the Japanese government decides to raise its defence budget and strengthen its military equipment against China, it makes one suspicious of Tokyo's sincerity to improve bilateral relations,\" it says, blaming the Abe administration for causing regional instability.\nThe China Daily highlights that Japan's defence budget is much higher than that of China and notes that its defence minister had accused Beijing for being \"a major maritime threat\" during his new year address.\nAnd finally, papers call for better measures to deal with the problem of unwanted infants after reports suggest that a number of baby hatches have been forced to close down.\nChina started such centres to ensure that parents could abandon their infants safely rather than leaving them on streets.\nHowever, several baby hatches are ceasing operations, while others are struggling to stay open due to manpower constraints, the Global Times reports.\nZhu Hong, the president of the welfare centre in Nanjing, tells the paper that parents of the abandoned infants \"transfer the medical burden and pressure onto welfare centres\" because nearly all abandoned babies \"suffer from serious congenital diseases\".\nLamenting the closure, an article in the West China City Daily suggests that the authorities should step up efforts to forbid abandonment of infants.\nA commentary in the China Youth Daily shares a similar view and points out that there is a lack of public assistance package for these parents.　\nBBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook.", "Beijing is now interpreting one of Hong Kong's laws to ban Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching. A decision is due on Monday.\nChina is acting within its legal rights, but many in Hong Kong accuse Beijing of ruling by decree.\nThe top legislative panel in China said Beijing must intervene in the dispute.\nIt added that it should deter advocates of Hong Kong independence, as their actions were a threat to national security, state news agency Xinhua reported.\nSome demonstrators scuffled with police in front of the office of China's representative in the territory. Protesters used umbrellas to shield themselves from the spray, and some threw bottles at police.\nOrganisers said there were at least 10,000 protesters in the march. Police said there were 8,000 people at the peak of the demonstration.\nTwo men were arrested for obstructing police duties and refusing to show their identification cards, police added.\nThere was a lot of anger directed at Beijing during the protests. Various demonstrators told me they felt Beijing was acting as a \"big brother\" or ruling by decree, and undermining the rule of law in Hong Kong.\nThe clashes that broke out after dark also fit a recent pattern. Protests organised by pro-democracy groups tend to be orderly and family friendly during the day, with police and demonstrators co-operating to some extent to allow traffic to pass through at certain times.\nBut more confrontational groups may stay on after the official march ends, staging sit ins or, as in this case, marching away from the route agreed with police and scuffling with officers.\nIt reflects a change in Hong Kong politics. In the past, many saw peaceful protest as the best way to bring about change. But in the last few years, some protesters have become more confrontational - arguing that playing by the rules has not achieved anything.\nThe issue started when the two lawmakers pledged allegiance to the \"Hong Kong nation\" and displayed a \"Hong Kong is not China\" banner during a swearing-in ceremony of the city's Legislative Council, the territory's parliament, last month.\nTheir oaths were not accepted, and a local Hong Kong court has been looking into the case.\nHowever, China announced that its parliament would invoke its rarely used power to interpret Hong Kong's mini constitution, the Basic Law, to prevent them from taking office.\nThe case has been seen by many in Hong Kong as a risk to the freedoms granted to the former British colony when it was handed back to China in 1997, which included a high degree of autonomy, and judicial independence." ]

[ "Father Joseph Carrier, C.S.C. was Director of the Science Museum and the Library and Professor of Chemistry and Physics until 1874. Carrier taught that scientific research and its promise for progress were not antagonistic to the ideals of intellectual and moral culture endorsed by the Church. One of Carrier's students was Father John Augustine Zahm (1851–1921) who was made Professor and Co-Director of the Science Department at age 23 and by 1900 was a nationally prominent scientist and naturalist. Zahm was active in the Catholic Summer School movement, which introduced Catholic laity to contemporary intellectual issues. His book Evolution and Dogma (1896) defended certain aspects of evolutionary theory as true, and argued, moreover, that even the great Church teachers Thomas Aquinas and Augustine taught something like it. The intervention of Irish American Catholics in Rome prevented Zahm's censure by the Vatican. In 1913, Zahm and former President Theodore Roosevelt embarked on a major expedition through the Amazon." ]

[ "A Science Hall was built in 1883 under the direction of Fr. Zahm, but in 1950 it was converted to a student union building and named LaFortune Center, after Joseph LaFortune, an oil executive from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Commonly known as \"LaFortune\" or \"LaFun,\" it is a 4-story building of 83,000 square feet that provides the Notre Dame community with a meeting place for social, recreational, cultural, and educational activities. LaFortune employs 35 part-time student staff and 29 full-time non-student staff and has an annual budget of $1.2 million. Many businesses, services, and divisions of The Office of Student Affairs are found within. The building also houses restaurants from national restaurant chains.", "Hesburgh is also credited with transforming the face of Notre Dame by making it a coeducational institution. In the mid-1960s Notre Dame and Saint Mary's College developed a co-exchange program whereby several hundred students took classes not offered at their home institution, an arrangement that added undergraduate women to a campus that already had a few women in the graduate schools. After extensive debate, merging with St. Mary's was rejected, primarily because of the differential in faculty qualifications and pay scales. \"In American college education,\" explained the Rev. Charles E. Sheedy, C.S.C., Notre Dame's Dean of Arts and Letters, \"certain features formerly considered advantageous and enviable are now seen as anachronistic and out of place.... In this environment of diversity, the integration of the sexes is a normal and expected aspect, replacing separatism.\" Thomas Blantz, C.S.C., Notre Dame's Vice President of Student Affairs, added that coeducation \"opened up a whole other pool of very bright students.\" Two of the male residence halls were converted for the newly admitted female students that first year, while two others were converted for the next school year. In 1971 Mary Ann Proctor became the first female undergraduate; she transferred from St. Mary's College. In 1972 the first woman to graduate was Angela Sienko, who earned a bachelor's degree in marketing.", "Besides its prominence in sports, Notre Dame is also a large, four-year, highly residential research University, and is consistently ranked among the top twenty universities in the United States and as a major global university. The undergraduate component of the university is organized into four colleges (Arts and Letters, Science, Engineering, Business) and the Architecture School. The latter is known for teaching New Classical Architecture and for awarding the globally renowned annual Driehaus Architecture Prize. Notre Dame's graduate program has more than 50 master's, doctoral and professional degree programs offered by the five schools, with the addition of the Notre Dame Law School and a MD-PhD program offered in combination with IU medical School. It maintains a system of libraries, cultural venues, artistic and scientific museums, including Hesburgh Library and the Snite Museum of Art. Over 80% of the university's 8,000 undergraduates live on campus in one of 29 single-sex residence halls, each with its own traditions, legacies, events and intramural sports teams. The university counts approximately 120,000 alumni, considered among the strongest alumni networks among U.S. colleges.", "In 2015-2016, Notre Dame ranked 18th overall among \"national universities\" in the United States in U.S. News & World Report's Best Colleges 2016. In 2014, USA Today ranked Notre Dame 10th overall for American universities based on data from College Factual. Forbes.com's America's Best Colleges ranks Notre Dame 13th among colleges in the United States in 2015, 8th among Research Universities, and 1st in the Midwest. U.S. News & World Report also lists Notre Dame Law School as 22nd overall. BusinessWeek ranks Mendoza College of Business undergraduate school as 1st overall. It ranks the MBA program as 20th overall. The Philosophical Gourmet Report ranks Notre Dame's graduate philosophy program as 15th nationally, while ARCHITECT Magazine ranked the undergraduate architecture program as 12th nationally. Additionally, the study abroad program ranks sixth in highest participation percentage in the nation, with 57.6% of students choosing to study abroad in 17 countries. According to payscale.com, undergraduate alumni of University of Notre Dame have a mid-career median salary $110,000, making it the 24th highest among colleges and universities in the United States. The median starting salary of $55,300 ranked 58th in the same peer group.", "All of Notre Dame's undergraduate students are a part of one of the five undergraduate colleges at the school or are in the First Year of Studies program. The First Year of Studies program was established in 1962 to guide incoming freshmen in their first year at the school before they have declared a major. Each student is given an academic advisor from the program who helps them to choose classes that give them exposure to any major in which they are interested. The program also includes a Learning Resource Center which provides time management, collaborative learning, and subject tutoring. This program has been recognized previously, by U.S. News & World Report, as outstanding.", "After a lull during the period of modern architectural dominance (roughly post-World War II until the mid-1980s), neoclassicism has seen somewhat of a resurgence. This rebirth can be traced to the movement of New Urbanism and postmodern architecture's embrace of classical elements as ironic, especially in light of the dominance of Modernism. While some continued to work with classicism as ironic, some architects such as Thomas Gordon Smith, began to consider classicism seriously. While some schools had interest in classical architecture, such as the University of Virginia, no school was purely dedicated to classical architecture. In the early 1990s a program in classical architecture was started by Smith and Duncan Stroik at the University of Notre Dame that continues successfully. Programs at the University of Miami, Andrews University, Judson University and The Prince's Foundation for Building Community have trained a number of new classical architects since this resurgence. Today one can find numerous buildings embracing neoclassical style, since a generation of architects trained in this discipline shapes urban planning.", "The University of Notre Dame du Lac (or simply Notre Dame /ˌnoʊtərˈdeɪm/ NOH-tər-DAYM) is a Catholic research university located adjacent to South Bend, Indiana, in the United States. In French, Notre Dame du Lac means \"Our Lady of the Lake\" and refers to the university's patron saint, the Virgin Mary. The main campus covers 1,250 acres in a suburban setting and it contains a number of recognizable landmarks, such as the Golden Dome, the \"Word of Life\" mural (commonly known as Touchdown Jesus), and the Basilica.", "Notre Dame alumni work in various fields. Alumni working in political fields include state governors, members of the United States Congress, and former United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. A notable alumnus of the College of Science is Medicine Nobel Prize winner Eric F. Wieschaus. A number of university heads are alumni, including Notre Dame's current president, the Rev. John Jenkins. Additionally, many alumni are in the media, including talk show hosts Regis Philbin and Phil Donahue, and television and radio personalities such as Mike Golic and Hannah Storm. With the university having high profile sports teams itself, a number of alumni went on to become involved in athletics outside the university, including professional baseball, basketball, football, and ice hockey players, such as Joe Theismann, Joe Montana, Tim Brown, Ross Browner, Rocket Ismail, Ruth Riley, Jeff Samardzija, Jerome Bettis, Brett Lebda, Olympic gold medalist Mariel Zagunis, professional boxer Mike Lee, former football coaches such as Charlie Weis, Frank Leahy and Knute Rockne, and Basketball Hall of Famers Austin Carr and Adrian Dantley. Other notable alumni include prominent businessman Edward J. DeBartolo, Jr. and astronaut Jim Wetherbee.", "The Rev. John J. Cavanaugh, C.S.C. served as president from 1946 to 1952. Cavanaugh's legacy at Notre Dame in the post-war years was devoted to raising academic standards and reshaping the university administration to suit it to an enlarged educational mission and an expanded student body and stressing advanced studies and research at a time when Notre Dame quadrupled in student census, undergraduate enrollment increased by more than half, and graduate student enrollment grew fivefold. Cavanaugh also established the Lobund Institute for Animal Studies and Notre Dame's Medieval Institute. Cavanaugh also presided over the construction of the Nieuwland Science Hall, Fisher Hall, and the Morris Inn, as well as the Hall of Liberal Arts (now O'Shaughnessy Hall), made possible by a donation from I.A. O'Shaughnessy, at the time the largest ever made to an American Catholic university. Cavanaugh also established a system of advisory councils at the university, which continue today and are vital to the university's governance and development", "The Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame is dedicated to research, education and outreach on the causes of violent conflict and the conditions for sustainable peace. It offers PhD, Master's, and undergraduate degrees in peace studies. It was founded in 1986 through the donations of Joan B. Kroc, the widow of McDonald's owner Ray Kroc. The institute was inspired by the vision of the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh CSC, President Emeritus of the University of Notre Dame. The institute has contributed to international policy discussions about peace building practices.", "As of 2012[update] research continued in many fields. The university president, John Jenkins, described his hope that Notre Dame would become \"one of the pre–eminent research institutions in the world\" in his inaugural address. The university has many multi-disciplinary institutes devoted to research in varying fields, including the Medieval Institute, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Kroc Institute for International Peace studies, and the Center for Social Concerns. Recent research includes work on family conflict and child development, genome mapping, the increasing trade deficit of the United States with China, studies in fluid mechanics, computational science and engineering, and marketing trends on the Internet. As of 2013, the university is home to the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index which ranks countries annually based on how vulnerable they are to climate change and how prepared they are to adapt.", "Since 2005, Notre Dame has been led by John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., the 17th president of the university. Jenkins took over the position from Malloy on July 1, 2005. In his inaugural address, Jenkins described his goals of making the university a leader in research that recognizes ethics and building the connection between faith and studies. During his tenure, Notre Dame has increased its endowment, enlarged its student body, and undergone many construction projects on campus, including Compton Family Ice Arena, a new architecture hall, additional residence halls, and the Campus Crossroads, a $400m enhancement and expansion of Notre Dame Stadium.", "In addition to films, Turner Classic Movies also airs original content, mostly documentaries about classic movie personalities, the world of filmmaking and particularly notable films. An occasional month-long series, Race and Hollywood, showcases films by and about people of non-white races, featuring discussions of how these pictures influenced white people's image of said races, as well as how people of those races viewed themselves. Previous installments have included \"Asian Images on Film\" in 2008, \"Native American Images on Film\" in 2010, \"Black Images on Film\" in 2006 \"Latino Images on Film\" in 2009 and \"Arab Images on Film\" in 2011. The network aired the film series Screened Out (which explored the history and depiction of homosexuality in film) in 2007 and Religion on Film (focusing on the role of religion in cinematic works) in 2005. In 2011, TCM debuted a new series entitled AFI's Master Class: The Art of Collaboration.", "Football gameday traditions During home games, activities occur all around campus and different dorms decorate their halls with a traditional item (e.g. Zahm House's two-story banner). Traditional activities begin at the stroke of midnight with the Drummers' Circle. This tradition involves the drum line of the Band of the Fighting Irish and ushers in the rest of the festivities that will continue the rest of the gameday Saturday. Later that day, the trumpet section will play the Notre Dame Victory March and the Notre Dame Alma Mater under the dome. The band entire will play a concert at the steps of Bond Hall, from where they will march into Notre Dame Stadium, leading fans and students alike across campus to the game.", "Yale University is an American private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 in Saybrook Colony as the Collegiate School, the University is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. The school was renamed Yale College in 1718 in recognition of a gift from Elihu Yale, who was governor of the British East India Company. Established to train Congregationalist ministers in theology and sacred languages, by 1777 the school's curriculum began to incorporate humanities and sciences. In the 19th century the school incorporated graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first Ph.D. in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887.", "Spielberg has filmed and is currently in post-production on an adaptation of Roald Dahl's celebrated children's story The BFG. Spielberg's DreamWorks bought the rights in 2010, originally intending John Madden to direct. The film was written by E.T. screenwriter Melissa Mathison and is co-produced by Walt Disney Pictures, marking the first Disney-branded film to be directed by Spielberg. The BFG is set to premiere out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2016, before its wide release in the US on July 1, 2016.", "Northwestern has roughly 225,000 alumni in all branches of business, government, law, science, education, medicine, media, and the performing arts. Among Northwestern's more notable alumni are U.S. Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern, Nobel Prize–winning economist George J. Stigler, Nobel Prize–winning novelist Saul Bellow, Pulitzer Prize–winning composer and diarist Ned Rorem, the much-decorated composer Howard Hanson, Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey Ali Babacan, the historian and novelist Wilma Dykeman, and the founder of the presidential prayer breakfast Abraham Vereide. U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, Supreme Court Justice and Ambassador to the United Nations Arthur Joseph Goldberg, and Governor of Illinois and Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson are among the graduates of the Northwestern School of Law. Many Northwestern alumni play or have played important roles in Chicago and Illinois, such as former Illinois governor and convicted felon Rod Blagojevich, Chicago Bulls and Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, and theater director Mary Zimmerman. Northwestern alumnus David J. Skorton currently serves as president of Cornell University. Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago and former White House Chief of Staff, earned a Masters in Speech and Communication in 1985.", "The \"Notre Dame Victory March\" is the fight song for the University of Notre Dame. It was written by two brothers who were Notre Dame graduates. The Rev. Michael J. Shea, a 1904 graduate, wrote the music, and his brother, John F. Shea, who earned degrees in 1906 and 1908, wrote the original lyrics. The lyrics were revised in the 1920s; it first appeared under the copyright of the University of Notre Dame in 1928. The chorus is, \"Cheer cheer for old Notre Dame, wake up the echos cheering her name. Send a volley cheer on high, shake down the thunder from the sky! What though the odds be great or small, old Notre Dame will win over all. While her loyal sons are marching, onward to victory!\"", "In Book 11 of his Confessions, St. Augustine of Hippo ruminates on the nature of time, asking, \"What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not.\" He begins to define time by what it is not rather than what it is, an approach similar to that taken in other negative definitions. However, Augustine ends up calling time a “distention” of the mind (Confessions 11.26) by which we simultaneously grasp the past in memory, the present by attention, and the future by expectation.", "The rise of Hitler and other dictators in the 1930s forced numerous Catholic intellectuals to flee Europe; president John O'Hara brought many to Notre Dame. From Germany came Anton-Hermann Chroust (1907–1982) in classics and law, and Waldemar Gurian a German Catholic intellectual of Jewish descent. Positivism dominated American intellectual life in the 1920s onward but in marked contrast, Gurian received a German Catholic education and wrote his doctoral dissertation under Max Scheler. Ivan Meštrović (1883–1962), a renowned sculptor, brought Croatian culture to campus, 1955–62. Yves Simon (1903–61), brought to ND in the 1940s the insights of French studies in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition of philosophy; his own teacher Jacques Maritain (1882–73) was a frequent visitor to campus.", "The University of Notre Dame has made being a sustainability leader an integral part of its mission, creating the Office of Sustainability in 2008 to achieve a number of goals in the areas of power generation, design and construction, waste reduction, procurement, food services, transportation, and water.As of 2012[update] four building construction projects were pursuing LEED-Certified status and three were pursuing LEED Silver. Notre Dame's dining services sources 40% of its food locally and offers sustainably caught seafood as well as many organic, fair-trade, and vegan options. On the Sustainable Endowments Institute's College Sustainability Report Card 2010, University of Notre Dame received a \"B\" grade. The university also houses the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Father Gustavo Gutierrez, the founder of Liberation Theology is a current faculty member.", "The band had a number of bass players during this period who did not fit with the band's chemistry. It was not until February 1971 that they settled on John Deacon and began to rehearse for their first album. They recorded four of their own songs, \"Liar\", \"Keep Yourself Alive\", \"The Night Comes Down\" and \"Jesus\", for a demo tape; no record companies were interested. It was also around this time Freddie changed his surname to \"Mercury\", inspired by the line \"Mother Mercury, look what they've done to me\" in the song \"My Fairy King\". On 2 July 1971, Queen played their first show in the classic line-up of Mercury, May, Taylor and Deacon at a Surrey college outside London.", "In 1919 Father James Burns became president of Notre Dame, and in three years he produced an academic revolution that brought the school up to national standards by adopting the elective system and moving away from the university's traditional scholastic and classical emphasis. By contrast, the Jesuit colleges, bastions of academic conservatism, were reluctant to move to a system of electives. Their graduates were shut out of Harvard Law School for that reason. Notre Dame continued to grow over the years, adding more colleges, programs, and sports teams. By 1921, with the addition of the College of Commerce, Notre Dame had grown from a small college to a university with five colleges and a professional law school. The university continued to expand and add new residence halls and buildings with each subsequent president.", "During World War II he worked on the Manhattan Project with J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller, developing the mathematical models behind the explosive lenses used in the implosion-type nuclear weapon. After the war, he served on the General Advisory Committee of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, and later as one of its commissioners. He was a consultant to a number of organizations, including the United States Air Force, the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Along with theoretical physicist Edward Teller, mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, and others, he worked out key steps in the nuclear physics involved in thermonuclear reactions and the hydrogen bomb.", "The PLP, the party in government when the decision to join CARICOM was made, has been dominated for decades by West Indians and their descendants. (The prominent roles of West Indians among Bermuda's black politicians and labour activists predated party politics in Bermuda, as exemplified by Dr. E. F. Gordon). The late PLP leader, Dame Lois Browne-Evans, and her Trinidadian-born husband, John Evans (who co-founded the West Indian Association of Bermuda in 1976), were prominent members of this group. They have emphasised Bermuda's cultural connections with the West Indies. Many Bermudians, both black and white, who lack family connections to the West Indies have objected to this emphasis.", "In the mid 1970s, various American groups (some with ties to Downtown Manhattan's punk scene, including Television and Suicide) had begun expanding on the vocabulary of punk music. Midwestern groups such as Pere Ubu and Devo drew inspiration from the region's derelict industrial environments, employing conceptual art techniques, musique concrète and unconventional verbal styles that would presage the post-punk movement by several years. A variety of subsequent groups, including New York-based Talking Heads and Boston-based Mission of Burma, combined elements of punk with art school sensibilities. In 1978, the former band began a series of collaborations with British ambient pioneer and ex-Roxy Music member Brian Eno, experimenting with Dada-influenced lyrical techniques, dance music, and African polyrhythms. San Francisco's vibrant post-punk scene was centered around such groups as Chrome, the Residents and Tuxedomoon, who incorporated multimedia experimentation, film and ideas from Antonin Artaud's Theater of Cruelty.", "Most feature movies shown during the prime time and early overnight hours (8:00 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. Eastern Time) are presented by film historian Robert Osborne (who has been with the network since its 1994 launch, except for a five-month medical leave from July to December 2011, when guest hosts presented each night's films) on Sunday through Wednesday evenings – with Osborne only presenting primetime films on weekends – and Ben Mankiewicz presenting only late evening films on Thursdays, and the \"Silent Sunday Nights\" and \"TCM Imports\" blocks on Sundays.", "In 2014 the Notre Dame student body consisted of 12,179 students, with 8,448 undergraduates, 2,138 graduate and professional and 1,593 professional (Law, M.Div., Business, M.Ed.) students. Around 21–24% of students are children of alumni, and although 37% of students come from the Midwestern United States, the student body represents all 50 states and 100 countries. As of March 2007[update] The Princeton Review ranked the school as the fifth highest 'dream school' for parents to send their children. As of March 2015[update] The Princeton Review ranked Notre Dame as the ninth highest. The school has been previously criticized for its lack of diversity, and The Princeton Review ranks the university highly among schools at which \"Alternative Lifestyles [are] Not an Alternative.\" It has also been commended by some diversity oriented publications; Hispanic Magazine in 2004 ranked the university ninth on its list of the top–25 colleges for Latinos, and The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education recognized the university in 2006 for raising enrollment of African-American students. With 6,000 participants, the university's intramural sports program was named in 2004 by Sports Illustrated as the best program in the country, while in 2007 The Princeton Review named it as the top school where \"Everyone Plays Intramural Sports.\" The annual Bookstore Basketball tournament is the largest outdoor five-on-five tournament in the world with over 700 teams participating each year, while the Notre Dame Men's Boxing Club hosts the annual Bengal Bouts tournament that raises money for the Holy Cross Missions in Bangladesh.", "James Wilson said during the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 that, \"Laws may be unjust, may be unwise, may be dangerous, may be destructive; and yet not be so unconstitutional as to justify the Judges in refusing to give them effect.\" George Mason agreed that judges \"could declare an unconstitutional law void. But with regard to every law, however unjust, oppressive or pernicious, which did not come plainly under this description, they would be under the necessity as judges to give it a free course.\" Chief Justice John Marshall (joined by Justice Joseph Story) took a similar position in 1827: \"When its existence as law is denied, that existence cannot be proved by showing what are the qualities of a law.\"", "In March 2013 Mendes said he would not return to direct the next film in the series, then known as Bond 24; he later recanted and announced that he would return, as he found the script and the plans for the long-term future of the franchise appealing. In directing Skyfall and Spectre, Mendes became the first director to oversee two consecutive Bond films since John Glen directed The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill in 1987 and 1989. Skyfall writer John Logan resumed his role of scriptwriter, collaborating with Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who returned for their sixth Bond film.[N 4] The writer Jez Butterworth also worked on the script, alongside Mendes and Craig. Dennis Gassner returned as the film's production designer, while cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema took over from Roger Deakins. In July 2015 Mendes noted that the combined crew of Spectre numbered over one thousand, making it a larger production than Skyfall. Craig is listed as co-producer.", "\"We used a technique of laying our program out in general debate,\" he said. When we got to the amendment phase, we would offer our program as a substitute for the Johnson proposal. If we lost in the Committee of the Whole, then we would usually offer it as a motion to recommit and get a vote on that. And if we lost on the motion to recommit, our Republican members had a choice: They could vote against the Johnson program and say we did our best to come up with a better alternative. Or they could vote for it and make the same argument. Usually we lost; but when you're only 140 out of 435, you don't expect to win many.", "Universal Studios Inc. (also known as Universal Pictures) is an American film studio, owned by Comcast through its wholly owned subsidiary NBCUniversal, and is one of Hollywood's \"Big Six\" film studios. Its production studios are at 100 Universal City Plaza Drive in Universal City, California. Distribution and other corporate offices are in New York City. Universal Studios is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Universal was founded in 1912 by the German Carl Laemmle (pronounced \"LEM-lee\"), Mark Dintenfass, Charles O. Baumann, Adam Kessel, Pat Powers, William Swanson, David Horsley, Robert H. Cochrane, and Jules Brulatour." ]

[ "Press Control+1 or Command+1. In the Format Cells box, click the Number tab. In the Category list, click Date, and then choose a date format you want in Type. You can adjust this format in the last step below." ]

[ "The DATEVALUE function in Excel converts a date in the text format to a serial number that Excel recognizes as a date. So, the formula to convert a text value to date is as simple as =DATEVALUE(A1) , where A1 is a cell with a date stored as a text string.", "When we format cells in Excel, we change the appearance of a number without changing the number itself. We can apply a number format (0.8, $0.80, 80%, etc) or other formatting (alignment, font, border, etc).", "=A2-TRUNC(A2) Subtracting one date from another will give the number of days between. When you subtract one date from another, Excel will typically format the formula cell as a date, too.", "To subtract days from a date you can directly subtract the number of days from the formula or apply the Excel DATE function. In this tutorial we explain how this can be achieved by using Excel and VBA. date: The date that you want to subtract the days from. number_of_days: Number of days to subtract from the date.", "Open the destination Excel workbook, and then display the worksheet that contains the exported data. Right-click a column or a selected range of cells, and then click Format Cells. On the Number tab, under Categories, select a format, such as Text, Number, Date, or Time.", "if you need to change date format in html then you can use date filter, but in controller you need to change date formate like yyyy-mm-dd to dd/MM/yyyy than how you can do it. you can change date formate using $filter('date')(date format timezone) in angular js controller.", "Right click the axis you will change data format, and select Format Axis from right-clicking menu. 2. Go ahead based on your Microsoft Excel version: (1) In Excel 2013's Format Axis pane, expand the Number group on the Axis Options tab, enter m/d or mmm or others into the Format Code box and click the Add button.", "The EOMONTH function of excel returns the serial number of last date of month of given date. The DAY function returns the Day from last date of month. Together they provide us number of days in month of given date. So yeah guys, this how you can get number of days of a month in excel.", "To determine how many weeks elapsed between two dates, we can use a simple formula to find the number of days between the dates, then divide by 7. The formula will return a decimal number. We can change the number format to a Fraction to display the number of days.", "['Summary. The Excel YEAR function returns the year component of a date as a 4-digit number. ... ', 'Get the year from a date.', 'Year as 4-digit number.', '=YEAR (date)', 'date - A valid Excel date.', 'The YEAR function extracts the year from a given date as a 4-digit number. For example:']", "['Calculate the due date for each invoice. Strategy: This one is simple for Excel. Simply add =B2+C2. You should get a date. If you get a number, then format the result as a date.', 'Add a date and a number and you get a date.']", "['In your Control Panel, click on Change Date, Time or Number Formats under the Clock and Region.', 'Click on Additional Settings.', 'Click on Date tab.', 'In the Short Date, you can specify desired format i.e. dd/mm/yyyy.', 'Click on Apply and OK.']", "['Copy the dates from the Excel spreadsheet as they are (most likely they are in the \"Date\" format).', 'Paste into a Word document doing a Paste Special -> Unformatted Text.']", "To convert the date-time format PHP provides strtotime() and date() function. We change the date format from one format to another. For example - we have stored date in MM-DD-YYYY format in a variable, and we want to change it to DD-MM-YYYY format.", "Create a constant on the report type input and select Excel. Place an Excel Easy Text.vi function. Create a control on the text input to enter your date. Enter your date in the format =DATE(YYYY,MM,DD)", "You can change the date format on the Project Options dialog box: Choose File > Options. Select General. Under Project view, pick an option from the Date format list.", "['Open Control Panel.', 'Click on the Clock, Language, and Region link.', 'Click on the Change date, time, or numbers formats link.', 'Under the Formats tab, click on the Additional settings button.', 'Click on the Time tab.']", "['Summary. The Excel EDATE function returns a date on the same day of the month, n months in the past or future. ... ', 'Shift date n months in future or past.', 'New date as Excel serial number.', '=EDATE (start_date, months)', 'start_date - Start date as a valid Excel date. ... ', 'The EDATE function can add or subtract months from a date.']", "Change the curdate() (current date) format in MySQL The current date format is 'YYYY-mm-dd'. To change current date format, you can use date_format().", "Date Format change from MM DD YYYY to DD MM YYYY in AX 2009 Try changing your machine regional settings. function str2date(Passing the parameter as per enum type selection). do change in your system language and regional setting and change date format there. You can also force the date format to a specific format.", "Find the percentage of change between two numbers First, click in cell B3 to apply the Percentage format to the cell. On the Home tab, click the Percentage button. If you are using Excel for the web, click Home > Number Format > Percentage.", "The Excel TODAY function returns the current date, updated continuously when a worksheet is changed or opened. The TODAY function takes no arguments. You can format the value returned by TODAY using any standard date format. If you need current date and time, use the NOW function.", "['Open your spreadsheet in Excel.', 'Add the data you want to the spreadsheet.', 'Select the cells you want to switch to the accounting format.', 'Click the \"Number Format\" list in the Number group of the Home ribbon tab, and then select \"Accounting.\" The numbers in the selected cell will reflect the new format.']", "['=EDATE(start date, number of months)', 'Step 1: Ensure the starting date is properly formatted – go to Format Cells (press Ctrl + 1) and make sure the number is set to Date.', 'Step 2: Use the =EDATE(C3,C5) formula to add the number of specified months to the start date.']", "YEAR is an inbuilt function in excel that can be used both as worksheet function and VBA function in excel. For Example, =YEAR (2018-11-25) would return the result as 2018. It does not matter whether the date is in date format or date & time format. YEAR can extract the year value from the supplied value.", "There are the requirements where we will be required to change default date format in sql server. The default date format of SQL is mdy(U.S English). Now to change sql server default date format from “mdy”(mm/dd/yyyy) to “dmy”(dd/mm/yyyy),we have to use SET DATEFORMAT command.", "Your system administrator can override that date format by changing the DateForm to ANSIDate (' YYYY-MM-DD ') or creating a custom SDF that changes the default DATE format (any valid date format). You can override the system-level date format for a user, session, individual column, or individual value.", "Hi, Approach 1: use the Format function to show date in the required format. FORMAT(Table[Date Column], \"DD/MM/YYYY\"). Approach 2: select your date field then go to modelling tab then change the data format option according to DD/MM/YYYY.", "Now we will create objects of Application, Workbook and Worksheet of Excel, to write and format the data into Excel. Currency Format = \"$#,##0.00_);[Red]($#,##0.00)\" . Date Format = \"mm-d-yy h:mm:ss AM/PM\" . Percentage Format = \"0.00%\" .", "If you have text as number formatting, it will regard new input incl numbers as a text, while General would regard any numbers as numbers and be aligned to the right in a cell. There's a difference how Excel deal with text and numbers.", "SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat(\"yyyy-MM-dd\"); String dateString = format. format( new Date() ); Date date = format. parse ( \"2009-12-31\" ); The string passed as parameter to the SimpleDateFormat class is a pattern that tells how the instance is to parse and format dates.", "['Select the cell where you want the date to appear.', 'Press and hold the Ctrl key on the keyboard.', 'Press and release the semi-colon key ( ; ) on the keyboard without releasing the Ctrl key.', 'Release the Ctrl key.']" ]

[ "Rudy Tomjanovich resigned as coach of the Los Angeles Lakers today, less than seven months after he was hired." ]

[ "LONDON, Feb 7 (Reuters Life!) - Tired of too much work and too little time to do it? Frustrated with the boss and stressed to the limit with no relief in sight?", "The traffic, the job, the kids -- there&#39;s no doubt about it, stress is a fact of life. But now for the first time, evidence suggests that too much stress not only gets under your skin, but travels deep into", "Scientists have identified a link between the brain and heart that can make a person die from too much excitement. About 20% of sudden deaths due to heart malfunction are thought to arise from emotional stress.", "Are you spending too much or too little on this and that?", "Too much, too soon? MySpace success story Colbie Caillat might have played to a full house Thursday at the House of Blues, but as an artist and performer, the likable California singer-songwriter isn't quite ready to graduate from the coffeehouse scene.", "Assessing the effects of too much sun and heat, and too little moisture.", "WASHINGTON -- Maybe you're saving too much for retirement. You may also be eating too many vegetables, spending too much time with the kids, exercising too regularly, and doing your job too diligently.", "Maybe you're saving too much for retirement. You may also be eating too many vegetables, spending too much time with the kids, exercising too regularly and doing your job too diligently.", "In mutual funds, how much turnover is too much?", "The offense had been thinking too much, reacting to every defensive nuance, turning football into chess. Too much brain. Not enough brawn.", "Nurses&#39; leaders warned last night that the expansion of the NHS was &quot;built on sand&quot;, relying too much on the recruitment of overseas and temporary staff who may quit at short notice.", "He's dropped in polls that gave him one lonely digit to begin with and seen friends peel away &#151; even fall melodramatically to their knees begging him to quit. Even a little bit of Ralph Nader is too much for Democrats.", "GCSE language students could cease taking oral tests because they are \"too stressful\", a report says.", "Psychological stress may be enough to age a woman’s chromosomes by 10 years, a new study suggests. The link between stress, ageing and health at the cellular level is unclear, but a team led by Elissa Epel", "The Los Angeles Lakers added four assistants to the staff of new coach Rudy Tomjanovich on Friday. Tomjanovich retained Frank Hamblen, who spent the five seasons as an assistant to former coach Phil Jackson", "In 1977, Los Angeles power forward Kermit Washington landed a punch on Houston&#39;s Rudy Tomjanovich that fractured Tomjanovich&#39;s face and skull, causing spinal fluid to leak into his nose.", "Make 2005 the year you moved much closer to quitting your job.", "Humans are not alone in suffering from stress-related illnesses, a team of British veterinarians reported: their pet cats can be affected too.", "How much is too much to pay for the use of a pair of old-school rotary phones? In Furthermore.", "New masters of the universe or creators of too much leverage?", "For some patients, it can be difficult to determine how much treatment is just too much.", "There can be too much snow, but there can&#39;t be too much celebrating for the Birds of Prey World Cup ski races that begin tomorrow at Beaver Creek.", "TUEDAY, Sept. 25 (HealthDay News) -- Lifestyles with too little movement, too much TV exposure and way too much junk food are pushing U.S. children toward a life of overweight and obesity, a collection of new studies finds.", "There may be too much doubt surrounding the big IPO.", "Three in four people who use antismoking products do not end up quitting, in part because they use them too little or for too short a time.", "There's not too much surprising about Gap's first quarter.", "If the problem with presents is that they reveal too much, that is also their value.", "Two inquiries into the claims that led to David Blunkett quitting as home secretary are due to report on Tuesday.", "Researchers say both too much and too little sleep is linked to a doubled risk of fatal cardiovascular disease.", "Too much is riding on the UGG brand's continued popularity.", "The chipmaker seems in denial about carrying too much inventory.", "DES MOINES It was very nearly a case of Too Much Information." ]

[ "The man is trying to balance on his surfboard." ]

[ "The man is deathly afraid of water.", "a woman falls off a surfboard", "A man is swimming in the waves on top of his surfboard.", "a surfboarder on a wave", "The man is catching some waves on his surfboard.", "A man surfs a wave with a surfboard.", "Surfers falling off their surfboards.", "A man on a surfboard catches a wave.", "The man falls off his horse.", "A man falls off his chair.", "A man about to fall off the edge of a trampoline.", "A man in a black wetsuit rides a wave with his cat on the surfboard.", "A guy is riding a wave on his surfboard.", "The surfboarder is riding a wave", "A man fall off his bike.", "A surfer falls of his board into the wave.", "A man is falling off his motorcycle.", "On a surfboard is a man riding a wave in a wetsuit.", "There is a gentleman about to fall off of his horse in a rodeo.", "A man in street clothes catches a wave on a surfboard.", "man falls off bull", "A man fall off from his car.", "A boy on a yellow surfboard riding the wave on his stomach.", "a man falls off a rock", "a man falls off a swing", "A person in a wet suit is riding a wave on his surfboard.", "a man falls off a scooter", "A man is falling off his bike at the park.", "A man falls off a ladder.", "A surfer is fishing for sharks off his surfboard.", "A young male catches a giant wave with his surfboard.", "A man is falling off an animal." ]

[ "The noun NIT has 2 senses: 1. a luminance unit equal to 1 candle per square meter measured perpendicular to the rays from the source. 2. egg or young of an insect parasitic on mammals especially a sucking louse; often attached to a hair or item of clothing.Familiarity information: NIT used as a noun is rare.Dictionary entry details.ypernyms (nit is a kind of...): egg (animal reproductive body consisting of an ovum or embryo together with nutritive and protective envelopes; especially the thin-shelled reproductive body laid by e.g. female birds)." ]

[ "Definitions for nit comb. Here are all the possible meanings and translations of the word nit comb. Wiktionary(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition: nit comb(Noun) a fine-toothed comb used to remove nits from the hair.", "But what seems a little odd is that the figurative sense of nit-picking, of petty criticism or fault finding, is modern. The Oxford English Dictionary records it first only in 1951, in the form nit-picker, in this helpful explanation from Collier’s: “Two long-time Pentagon stand-bys are fly-speckers and nit-pickers.", "\\nIt's caving in around me (caving in,) it's tearing me apart (tearing me,). \\nIt's all coming down around me (coming down,) Does anyone anyone care at all. \\nI will never be, what you want me to. \\nYou pull me under, I pull you under.", "Q From Tim Nagle: What is the origin of the expression nit-picking? A The phrase comes from the task of removing the tiny eggs of lice (nits) from someone’s hair and clothing, a tedious activity that required close attention and care.", "When is a Nit Not a Nit? a visual guide to what's what. Critter CardsTM: get instructions to help you distinguish lice and nits from hair debris! If a parent reports ongoing problems with nits without ever seeing a louse, it may be a sign of confusion in determining nits versus common hair debris.", "What does primary and non contributing really mean in regards to general liability insurance coverage? Answer . \\nIt means that whoever states their insurance is Primary, it's really Primary regardless of who is at fault.", "What does de mean? What does derecho mean? What does esta mean? What does Juez mean? What does poder mean? What does por favor mean? What does puede mean? What does que mean? What does ser mean? What does su mean What does tener mean? What does tiene mean? What does un mean? What does usted mean? workers compensation", "Nit vs TAG Player. I was just wondering, if there is, what is the difference between a Nit and a TAG (Tight AGgressive) player?", "You must, must, must get rid of the nits along with killing the live lice. You can't just comb out the nits. You have to either pick them out or do what I did-cut off the hair right at the shaft.By that, I mean cut one single hair. Kids have a ton of hair and it won't even be noticeable.eport Abuse. You must, must, must get rid of the nits along with killing the live lice. You can't just comb out the nits. You have to either pick them out or do what I did-cut off the hair right at the shaft. By that, I mean cut one single hair.", "What Does T Mean? What Does The Below Sentence Mean? What Does This Mean? What Does Swipe And Ficky Mean In This... What Does This Word Mean? ? Re: What Does It Mean? What Does This Phrase Mean: Burst Into The Seams? What Does It Mean? What Does The Statement Mean? What Does White-Out Mean? What Does Knock Me Clean Over Mean? What Does 'Want' Mean In The Below Example? What Does State To The Left Below Mean? What Does Sloppy-Joe Mean In Below Lines? What Does Jeopardy Mean?", "What does THOT mean? What does IANAL mean? What does MCM mean on Instagram? What does Ayy LMAO mean? What does WCW mean? What does TBT mean? What does OOTD mean? What does SMH mean? What does OOH KILL ‘EM mean? What does TLDR mean? TL;DR; Plural of Crisis; What does igers mean on Instagram? What does FOH mean on Instagram; What does FBF mean on Instagram? What does FML mean?", "Eggs and nits vary in color, from yellowish-brown to white. Since the hair grows, nits are usually found further away from the root of the hair. Many schools have a “No Nit Policy,” which means children who have had head lice are not readmitted to school until all the nits are gone.", "Nits alone, without live lice, are not contagious. In fact, no-nit policies enacted by schools (meaning that if a child has any nits at all they are not allowed in school) are unnecessary and counterproductive. Studies have shown that children with nits but no lice have only a 20% chance of infestation. No-nit policies lead to unnecessary pesticide exposure, days of missed school, and missed work for parents. If there are nits but no live adult lice, comb out the nits and wait to see if any come back.", "Be diligent!: Nits are the eggs of the head lice. Be diligent in removing as they can be resiliant and all you need is one to hatch and you will have another infestation. So be diligent. ...Read more.", "in text what does WEG mean; what does mbn mean in texting; what does b4n mean; what does tmb mean; guess the text answers; what does fam mean in text; what does selfie mean; what does bsns mean in texting; hmu meaning; what does emo mean in texting; what does kc mean in texting; qpsa text meaning; what does lulz mean; what does selfie mean in texting; what does sol mean in texting", "What does tmc mean in texting? what does dm mean in texting? What does x_x mean in texting? What does bbu mean in texting? What does ofc mean in texting? What does db mean when your texting? What does * * mean in texting? What does idk p mean when texting? What does ypu mean in texting? What does bet mean in texting? We need your help! Please help us improve our content by removing questions that are essentially the same and merging them into this question.", "what does dzuma mean - what does dzuma mean in polish - what does dzuma mean in english - what does drum mean in german - what does duma mean in polish - what does dzuma mean definition - what does dzuma mean in hooked - what does dupa mean in polish - what does duma mean in russian - what does zuma mean -.", "What does `yu` mean in texting? What does xo mean when texting? What does bet mean in texting? What does :* mean in texting :*? What does x_x mean in texting? What does nba mean in texting? What does ypu mean in texting? What does * * mean in texting? What does <^^*> mean in texting? We need your help! Please help us improve our content by removing questions that are essentially the same and merging them into this question.", "Life Cycle. The life cycle of a louse begins as an egg, also called a nit. The nit is a 1mm whitish-yellow speck that attaches itself firmly to an individual hair strand close to the scalp. After 7 to 10 days, the nit hatches and becomes what is known as a nymph, or a young louse.ife Cycle. The life cycle of a louse begins as an egg, also called a nit. The nit is a 1mm whitish-yellow speck that attaches itself firmly to an individual hair strand close to the scalp. After 7 to 10 days, the nit hatches and becomes what is known as a nymph, or a young louse.", "In both common and official usage, NIT or National Invitation Tournament refers to the post-season tournament unless otherwise qualified. Both the pre-and post-season tournaments were operated by the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA) up until 2005, when they were purchased by the NCAA.", "A fire not large enough to roast a nit, and a supper too small to fatten him beforehand! Das der gmein man, one eine offne Disputation, nit zu stillen was. We may therefore say, as nit is a sleight of hand with ideas and conceptions, so stratagem is a sleight of hand with actions. On War Carl von Clausewitz. Here with Kamala was the worth and purpose of his present life, nit with the business of Kamaswami.", "what does embed post mean; what does embed post mean; What does Embed Post mean? What does it mean to embed a post; Related Help Center FAQs; What does it mean to see first? What does active mean in messages on Facebook? What does it mean to Like something? What does it mean to unfollow someone? What does it mean to follow someone or a Page? What does it mean if the pixel status says No activity yet...", "Nouns denoting animals. Hypernyms (nit is a kind of...): egg (animal reproductive body consisting of an ovum or embryo together with nutritive and protective envelopes; especially the thin-shelled reproductive body laid by e.g. female birds).ypernyms (nit is a kind of...): egg (animal reproductive body consisting of an ovum or embryo together with nutritive and protective envelopes; especially the thin-shelled reproductive body laid by e.g. female birds).", "Old English hnitu louse egg, nit, from Proto-Germanic *khnito (cf. Norwegian nit, Middle Dutch nete, Dutch neet, Middle High German niz, German Niß), from PIE root *knid- egg of a louse (cf. Russian, Polish gnida, Czech knida; Greek konidos, genitive konis egg of a louse).", "One nit is equivalent to one candela per square meter. The candela, formerly called candlepower, is approximately the amount of light emitted by a common tallow candle; technically it is the quantity of radiation emitted by 1.667 x 10 -6 square meter of a blackbody at the melting point of platinum.eople who have unusually high or unreasonable standards for the quality of a thing are sometimes referred to as nitpickers. 2) In lighting, the nit is a unit of visible-light intensity, commonly used to specify the brightness of a cathode ray tube or liquid crystal display computer display.", "solved What does (OEM/Tray) mean? What does OEM mean? What does OEM software mean? OEM vs Retail? What does it all mean? solved E5-2670 Different Version? What does this mean? (sr0kx) What does it mean it says windows 10 ready? solved what does ''both'' mean on windows 10 architecture? solved What does Activate Windows mean", "\\nIt's what it is now. \\nIt's what it is. \\nWhat it is now. The drinking dens are spilling out. \\nThere's staggering in the square. \\nThere's lads and lasses falling about. \\nAnd a crackling in the air. \\nDown around the dungeon doors.\\nThe shelters and the queues.nIt's what it is now. \\nIt's what it is. \\nWhat it is now. The drinking dens are spilling out. \\nThere's staggering in the square. \\nThere's lads and lasses falling about. \\nAnd a crackling in the air. \\nDown around the dungeon doors.", "I've also seen it capitalized as if it were an abbreviation (i.e. NIT). For an example usage see this post : Of course there is a difference between a comment saying: Nit: Trailing whitespace and According to Section V, Subsection VII of the Coding Manual you should never add trailing whitespace.Please see that you don't. or some stuff like that.IT). For an example usage see this post : Of course there is a difference between a comment saying: Nit: Trailing whitespace and According to Section V, Subsection VII of the Coding Manual you should never add trailing whitespace. Please see that you don't. or some stuff like that.", "Hair casts are thin, elongated, cylinder-shaped segments of dandruff which encircle the hair shaft and are easily dislodged. A Nit (Louse Egg) is a smooth, oval shaped structure which is attached to the side of the hair shaft ranging in color from off-white to brown and is slightly smaller than a sesame seed.", "What is the difference between Dandruff and Nits? • Nits are eggs of lice laid by female lice while dandruff is a condition of the scalp. • Nits are found on the shafts of hair and are a result of sharing of head accessories and garments. They are also caught with head to head contact.", "In brief: Lice. It may take 2 to 3 weeks (or sometimes even longer) to become aware of lice or nits. Itching does not occur for all people. In brief: Lice. It may take 2 to 3 weeks (or sometimes even longer) to become aware of lice or nits. Itching does not occur for all people.", "The cost incurred by a company to produce, store and sell one unit of a particular product. Unit costs include all fixed costs (i.e. plant and equipment) and all variable costs (labor, materials, etc.) involved in production.Next Up.nit cost is an important metric to look at when evaluating a unit grower stock, or a stock that chiefly produces items that have a low fixed cost. Generally, the larger a company grows, the lower the unit cost it can achieve through economies of scale." ]

[ "Cost. It simply costs less to make a small hi res screen. All high end laptops and many mid range are 1080P or higher resolution. Laptop screens in the low end are essentially the same as they were 10 years ago and they are cheap to make." ]

[ "The laptop screen might be limited to 768P, but that doesn't mean that the video card on your laptop is limited to that. The video card probably supports a very wide variety of resolutions - its ability to drive a 1080p monitor will depend on the quality of the video card. e.g. some entry level graphics cards or the integrated Intel HD series cards can probably do 1080P graphics, just not that well. Technically you can have a video card with multiple outputs - eg. my GTX560 has an HDMI and two DVI outs - I could have that connected to a 1280 x 720 , a 1680 x 1050, and a 1920 x 1080 monitors for each output.", "when taking video with a sensor with greater resolution than the video resolution the camera ignores the other pixels only scanning and recording those needed for the video resolution. Due to other specifications, processor speed etc, manufacturers sometimes find to maintain proper performance lowering the frame resolution is necessary. This is why your old flip phone with 3mp camera didnt take 1080p video even though 1080p is only 2.1mp.", "Resolution is how many pixels there are on the whole screen. Pixel density is how many pixels there are in a square centimetre of screen. So for example if my laptop and my phone both have the same screen resolution, the phone must have higher pixel density because it's got the same number of pixels but a smaller screen to fit all those pixels into.", "* Making a large television with the same pixel density would be extremely expensive. It wouldn't make economical sense to do so. * There's not as much benefit to high pixel density displays for televisions because you're at a greater distance from the screen. * It wouldn't make sense to have such a high resolution since there's little to no content for consumers above 1080p. We're just starting to have some 4K content available to the consumer market, so for now, there's no real reason to go above that. * It's difficult to devices to drive super high resolution displays, due to the sheer amount of data required to do so. A lot of cable standards don't support anything above 1080p or 4K.", "Because they shoot at the max resolution of the camera sensor, which is typically square. On a side note, I wonder why phone cameras can't just auto rotate the video when you start to shoot vertically, since they have more than enough resolution to take 1080p video in either orientation...", "It is a lot more difficult and expensive to make electronics really really small. That's also why a desktop computer of the same basic specs will cost less than the laptop. It's also a phone - so you have to add in those components.", "The sizes are stagnating because they've outpaced content. I've got a 1080p television, and there are still no broadcasts in 1080p - I'm limited to bluray if I want full resolution content. 1440p screens are growing in popularity among pc enthusiasts, but there's no television or movies that are readily available in 1440p, so you're just interpolating 1080p content. As LCDs have taken over both the TV and PC monitor markets, more and more computer monitors are becoming 1080p to be able to use the same manufacturing process as TVs. Half a decade ago, resolution varied drastically with size. 15\" was 1024x768, 19\" was 1280x1024, 20+\" was 1600x1200, plus 1366x768 and 1680x1050 widescreen. Now, everything from a 20\" to a 28\" pc monitor is 1920x1080, with only expensive high end stuff offering a higher resolution. Televisions are the same - a 92\" has the same resolution as a 20\".", "an Inch is a measuring unit. a Pixel is an object. It can be any size. A display's resolution describes how many pixels it has. 1080p means it has 1080 pixels on the short side. So, obviously, to fill a 42\" 1080p TV and a 5\" 1080p phone with the same number of pixels is going to require differently sized pixels.", "The simple answer is: cinemas don't upscale, they display in native resolution. There are 2k (1080p) and 4k (2160p) projectors on the market, and cameras that shoot in both formats. The content is shot, edited, and displayed in it's native resolution.", "4k isnt HDMI...4k is about the *resolution of the video* being 4k. which is almost 4 times as much as normal 1080p HD is at the moment. HDMI cables we have at the moment cant run that high a resolution, but HDMI 2 will.", "As a Brazilian I can tell you why: we do it because we don`t trust the government and because we all feel that if we were in power we would exploit it as well. So basically because most believe that , given the chance, they would say \"screw everyone\" and take as much advantage as possible, they do NOT find themselves outraged for being screwed by others, the government, and the system.", "1080p is a resolution, 1920x1080 pixels. 1080p60 is the same resolution + 60 frames per second.", "You lose detail. How much detail depends on the resolution of the display. It is possible to have a high-resolution 4:3 display, however most 4:3 television displays have a low \"standard definition\" resolution of around 704×480 pixels (in the US/Canada) or 704×576 pixels (in most countries outside the US/Canada). When 16:9 (widescreen) films are presented on \"standard definition\" 4:3 displays in letterboxed format, the effective resolution is usually around 704x396 (totalling 278,784 pixels). So, all in all, you lose around 1,794,816 pixels of information/detail when you present a 1080p movie on a standard definition 4:3 display. Basically that means the letterboxed version on the 4:3 SD TV only has 13.4% of the detail/resolution of the original 1080p movie. If you have a high resolution 4:3 display (e.g. 1024x768), it's possible you may be able to retain more of the detail, but you will still be losing a lot of the detail/resolution when compared to the original 1080p source material.", "Probably because your phone has hardware that can decode the video, while your laptop needs to do it via software.", "The speed limit of the road might be 90 mph, but your phone tops out at 55 while your laptop can maintain that 90.", "Because '2K' is a marketing term with no formal definition. Basically what the people selling the screens are trying to say is that the resolution is better than 1080p.", "Nothing is stopping us. Theres just no market value. Even 4k is limited by content creators actually making their products 4k in resolution, most of the market for media consumption is for 2k displays.", "Being 4k AND touchscreen is in no way related to each other technically. The feature of being 4k resolution is currently a \"premium\" feature. Most laptops that have this feature also have the \"premium\" feature of having a touchscreen. Think of buying a car with all the features, if it has a sunroof, it probably also has power windows.", "[1080p](_URL_2_) and [4k](_URL_0_) both refer to video resolutions. In contrast, 4:4:0 and 4:4:4 are both [chroma subsampling](_URL_1_) schemes. 4k at 4:4:0 is completely different from 1080p at 4:4:4. The former is a high resolution video with half-resolution chroma, the latter is a lower video resolution with full-resolution chroma.", "Sensor technology has progressed greatly in the last three or so years, allowing small CMOS sensors to capture images with really nice clarity. In addition, most cell phones in the higher price range have very nice optics...usually at an f2 or similar to allow a large amount of light to enter the lens and strike the sensor, giving better images in low light Additionally, the software that interprits what the sensor \"sees\" is vastly improved with greater processing power, allowing the software to improve the raw sensor data before you ever see the picture, fixing issues you never knew were there", "1080p native means that the system is actually rendering the image that will be displayed on the screen at 1080p resolution and sending that to the display. Upscaled means the system is rendering an image that's at a lower resolution than 1080p, and the image is upscaled, aka stretched, when it's displayed on a 1080p screen. The stretching process can create jagged edges and other artifacts, and while more sophisticated upscaling algorithms exist to try to eliminate these issues, it still doesn't quite match up to the quality of natively rendered 1080p.", "For a majority of birds, not very often (I don;t have numbers), primarily because it puts them too far from their food source. Wild animals, as a rule, don;t have the luxury of doing stuff just for fun. They normally spend all of their time and energy either looking for food or looking for sex.", "2K and 4K refer to resolutions higher than 1080. 4K is exactly 4x the resolution of 1080p at a resolution of 3840x2160. 2K is only slightly higher than 1080p but it is a different aspect ratio, a resolution of 2048×1080. 10-bit refers to the color space of the image and has nothing to do with resolution. Most consumer TVs display 8 bit color which is capable of 16 million colors. 10-bit color is capable of 68 billion colors.", "because they suck and everyone still has a laptop or a tablet. So...if you ask me, until they work better AND the phone can replace a laptop/tablet then it's just wasted money. If you're sitting there with your laptop/table and your pico projector phone and you wanna watch something it's not a hard decision. They just aren't \"there\" yet on the scale that can get them into a phone.", "Because it's not a fingerprint scanner, it's just a camera. Advanced fingerprint scanners use high resolution CMOS sensors, pressure and temperature sensors, and a myriad of other tricks to detect an actual finger against a simple printout of your print. The scanner on phones and laptops, and other cheap consumer scanners are barely more than a cheap CMOS and a cheap lenses, with some software to do the processing. If the plastic bag is clear, it should work as well. A printout of your fingerprint will most likely work as well.", "They use mostly shitty screens based on TN panel technology. Something like the iPad uses IPS panel technology and looks good from pretty much every angle. You can buy IPS screens for your desktop (or MVA, PVA and other great screen technologies), some laptops also use them but they are rare and the laptop manufacturers are saving pennies by using cheap TN panels.", "Processing power. Your IPhone may be good and a marvel of miniaturization, but it isn't nearly as powerful as your laptop. The laptop can process all of the complex images and ads far faster than your phone can because your laptop processes *everything* faster.", "Just like computer monitors do - the device interpolates the pixels of the image. In other words, rather than a 1-to-1 mapping of pixels, each pixel takes on some of the color of nearby pixels. There's no reason why other phones can't do this, as it's really just a matter of software. But interpolating the pixels results in a blurrier image. This is why you should always use your screen in its native resolution. And this is probably also why some phone manufacturers choose to just shrink down the content if you change the resolution, since this maintains a 1-to-1 pixel mapping.", "It's not. HD by definition is anything with higher resolution than standard definition. 1080p just happens to be a popular one at the moment. Once costs associated with building the hardware and underlying engineering infrastructure to support higher resolutions on a large scale, we'll start to see 4k resolution proliferate through the market with even higher resolutions coming in the future.", "A few reasons. * The intensity of work done on a PC/laptop is usually higher. This roughly equates to heat. Video games at full resolution and frame rate will equal a lot more heat than facebook on a phone. * Phones are made to wick the heat away. They don't have much free air inside so the heat goes straight to the case/shell of the phone and out into your hand/pocket/table. * Phones don't have chips that generate as much heat. They use very small processors running at lower speeds that just don't have the capability to generate that heat.", "From wikipedia: > 1080p (1920×1080 px; also known as Full HD or FHD and BT.709) is a set of HDTV high-definition video modes characterized by 1,920 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 1,080 pixels down the screen vertically; Obviously there's not enough pixels for standard 1080p. However, computers can downsample images - basically, they simulate the larger screen, figure out what the best colors for the larger but less numerous real pixels are based on their location, and then shows that composite color instead. Say you had a screen that was exactly 1/2 the size of the video. Lets say that the four small pixels were like this: `BLUE | BLUE` `BLUE | RED` To compress that to a single larger pixel on the low-res screen, you'd make a color that's 75% blue and 25% red - a blueish purple. There are some fairly complex algorithms that map between larger images and smaller screens in such a way that it's visually appealing, but that's the rough gist of it. Edit: typos.", "Common display resolutions tend to just be previous standards multiplied by 4, as that way you can scale previous content up and future content down with no calculations as its a straight conversion. 1080p was the previous standard, 4K is literally just 4x1080p. 720p was the standard before 1080p, which got multiplied to 1440p, which never really got widespread adoption as it wasn't 'enough' over 1080p to justify." ]

[ "Wiz Khalifa" ]

[ "But Not for Me" ]

[ "As an engineer I used to place all the Formulae on notes I needed on the walls throughout my apartment. Sit in the bath and read engineering. Lie in bed and it all becomes clear." ]

[ "There is nothing special about the black box (which is orange). It is the electronics inside which are special, able to withstand in excess of 2000g of accelleration, and retain the recorded data. Your brain turns to goo at 50g, no matter what they make the plane out of. Sorry!", "No your definitely not the one who needs to read a book. Alot of children get on the computer and think its all fun and games. Some of it is, but I hope my daughter doesn't learn about alot of these things teenagers are learnig today. Its really getting out of control. Where are the parents?", "None. We have had a fly-by, but no orbiters. Messenger will eventually be there, but it is rather hard to orbit mercury. You launch a probe to it, and you need to be pretty craft to be able to stop it at mercury since it will have a tendancy to be accellerated into the sun.", "In your 404.html file place the following <head> tag:\\n\\n<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"2;url=http://your.new/url.html\"> \\n\\nYou made need to make sure that custom error pages is turned on depending on your webserver.\\n\\nIf your server allows scripting, use the response.redirect method for best results. If you don't know what that is, then go with the above refresh method.", "It depends on the object. Tests with coins have measured velocities too low to cause signifcant damage to the average human head.\\n\\nTerminal velocity, in this case the maximum speed a falling object will reach, depends on the shape of the object, the accelleration, and the qualities of the atmosphere.\\n\\nWhen an object is dropped near earth, it accellerates towards the earth at about 32 ft/sec/sec. It goes faster and faster until the frictional drag from the air, has a slowing effect equal to the speeding effect from gravity. From that point on it will stay approximately the same speed. A feather has a very low terminal velocity. A crowbar has a much higher one. Its all about friction in air.\\n\\nA penny dropped near a planet without an atmosphere would accellerate toward the planet, getting faster and faster until it hit. This scenario could be deadly for the space-suited person in the way.\\n\\nWater falling has an additional complication in that the air drag changes the shape of the water droplet and that in turn affect the drag. A water droplet's changing shape on impact also affects the damage it might do a person.", "HSBC's headquarters are at 8, Canada Square, London, E14 5HQ, and try 0207 991 8888 for the building's reception.\\n\\nNot sure that's the best method for job applications, though, if that's what you're thinking of...", "something that would bring both pain & pleasure though I can't specify what method", "There are other methods of insulin therapy that do not require multiple daily injections. \\n\\nThere are insulin pumps that provide a constant flow of insulin to the patient through a small, comfortably worn catheter or tiny needle underneath the skin. The pumps are small and can be work discreetly. They are great for children simply because they require less sticks. \\n\\nThe FDA has recently approved an inhalable insulin which should be on the market for public use by early summer. With this method, a powder form of insulin is placed in an inhaler-device and is used in a method similar to inhaling asthma medications. \\n\\nMedical technology is advancing with every passing day. New methods of insulin therapy will continue to be created / invented. There have been talks about creating an insulin patch-type system, but, as your previous answer said, there will likely never be an insulin pill. \\n\\nIf you are on insulin therapy and are interested in finding an alternative to daily injections, talk to your doctor. Only a trained medical professional can prescribe the treatment that is best suited for your condition. \\n\\nGood luck and best wishes...", "First, add a .NET reference to your project for the \"System.Windows.Forms.dll\". Then, at the top of your source file, add \"using System.Windows.Forms;\"\\n\\nThe \"MessageBox\" class is what you are interested in, specifically the static method \"Show()\". There are several overloaded methods that allow you to change the title, text, icon and buttons for the message box.", "It's virtually impossible to know the actual population of the earth. Even if you somehow managed to count 6 billion + people, there would be more being born in the process than you could keep up with. Our best method is to do very well-calculated statistics and baset the population on that.", "In an enterprise bean with container-managed transactions, the EJB container sets the boundaries of the transactions. You can use container-managed transactions with any type of enterprise bean: session, entity, or message-driven. Container-managed transactions simplify development because the enterprise bean code does not explicitly mark the transaction's boundaries. The code does not include statements that begin and end the transaction.\\n\\nTypically, the container begins a transaction immediately before an enterprise bean method starts. It commits the transaction just before the method exits. Each method can be associated with a single transaction. Nested or multiple transactions are not allowed within a method.\\n\\nContainer-managed transactions do not require all methods to be associated with transactions. When deploying a bean, you specify which of the bean's methods are associated with transactions by setting the transaction attributes\\n\\nA transaction attribute may have one of the following values:\\n\\n * Required\\n * RequiresNew\\n * Mandatory\\n * NotSupported\\n * Supports\\n * Never\\n\\nRequired\\n\\nIf the client is running within a transaction and invokes the enterprise bean's method, the method executes within the client's transaction. If the client is not associated with a transaction, the container starts a new transaction before running the method.\\n\\nThe Required attribute will work for most transactions. Therefore, you may want to use it as a default, at least in the early phases of development. Because transaction attributes are declarative, you can easily change them at a later time.\\nRequiresNew\\n\\nIf the client is running within a transaction and invokes the enterprise bean's method, the container takes the following steps:\\n\\n 1. Suspends the client's transaction\\n 2. Starts a new transaction\\n 3. Delegates the call to the method\\n 4. Resumes the client's transaction after the method completes\\n\\nIf the client is not associated with a transaction, the container starts a new transaction before running the method.\\n\\nYou should use the RequiresNew attribute when you want to ensure that the method always runs within a new transaction.\\nMandatory\\n\\nIf the client is running within a transaction and invokes the enterprise bean's method, the method executes within the client's transaction. If the client is not associated with a transaction, the container throws the TransactionRequiredException.\\n\\nUse the Mandatory attribute if the enterprise bean's method must use the transaction of the client.\\nNotSupported\\n\\nIf the client is running within a transaction and invokes the enterprise bean's method, the container suspends the client's transaction before invoking the method. After the method has completed, the container resumes the client's transaction.\\n\\nIf the client is not associated with a transaction, the container does not start a new transaction before running the method.\\n\\nUse the NotSupported attribute for methods that don't need transactions. Because transactions involve overhead, this attribute may improve performance.\\nSupports\\n\\nIf the client is running within a transaction and invokes the enterprise bean's method, the method executes within the client's transaction. If the client is not associated with a transaction, the container does not start a new transaction before running the method.\\n\\nBecause the transactional behavior of the method may vary, you should use the Supports attribute with caution.\\nNever\\n\\nIf the client is running within a transaction and invokes the enterprise bean's method, the container throws a RemoteException. If the client is not associated with a transaction, the container does not start a new transaction before running the method.", "Physical? I would say that the Tatra Mountains are most beautiful, the great river Vistula is noatable as is the Baltic coast with its amazing amber resources ( the best amber in the world is from Poland) The Ancient strip farming methods paint the landscape in a tapestry which is forgotten in the rest of Europe.", "try searching for them on ebay checking completed sales in advanced search. Unlike other methods, this will actually give you a sense of what you actually can get for them", "Sounds like the US, doesn't it? \\nIts accellerated since Bush stole the first election, but it got its start during the Reagan Administration, Illegal Iran Contra war, Moral Majority, and the assault on the nation's poor began under Ronnie. I honestly believe it is going to have to get a whole lot worse before people are going wake up and respond.\\n\\nThe dumbing down of the population with mass media has only helped create more of an American Sheeple. \\n\\nWe are already there.", "You need to find a way of getting water running through your engine cooling system. \\n\\nOn an outboard engine you would do this by attaching an engine flush to the water intake gratings or on some outboards a dedicated water flush attachment is provided.\\n\\nThere is probably a similar method for Jet Ski engines. If you are unsure what to do I think the best thing for you would be to contact your local Jet Ski dealer or marine engineers for advice before you go connecting a hose to the wrong place.", "depends on the kind of stitches and the wound...do you remember what the doctor said? they should have told you whether or not you could clean it (in normal bath or shower method) or if you have to keep it dry.", "well,a bacterial culture,or microbial culture,is a method of growing a microbial organism to determine what it is,its abundance in the sample being tested,or both.it is one of the primary diagnostic methods of microbiology.it is often used a tool to determine the cause of infectious disease by letting the agent multiply (reproduce) in predetermined media in laboratory.\\nthe most common method of microbiological culture uses Petri dishes with a layer of agar-based growth medium in them to grow bacterial cultures.this is generally done inside of an incubator.\\nthe term culture can also,though infrequently and informally,be used as a synonym for tissue culture,which involves the growth of cells or tissues explanted from a multi-cellular organism.", "Generally speaking, I do not trust online translators at all. They are only useful to get a gist of what the original source text is saying. Currently, we do not have the technology to produce a target text that accurately conveys the meaning of the original text AND is grammatically correct in the target text. It's just not possible without human intervention. \\n\\nBy the way, the way you mentioned to check the accuracy of a translator is probably not the best method to use, because back translations are never accurate, even with a human. Back translations are never considered an accurate form of translation testing in the industry. It is difficult for even the best human translator to determine exactly what the original author meant to say through a translated phrase. A good translator is able to convey the meaning of a source text. A machine cannot determine meaning very easily.\\n\\nThe link below demonstrates SYSTRAN machine translations. At the end, it shows what happens when you translate the same phrase over and over again with different languages.", "I would refine the problem some more first.\\nResearching \"the impact of objects on wood\" is a little vague. What type of objects? What do you mean by \"impact\" in a scientifically testable way? What type of wood (not just \"oak\" or \"pine\", but wooden boards? wooden chairs?).\\n\\nThink of what your controls for the experiment will be, what will be your variables, how will you test, ...\\nFollow the scientific method.", "The purposes of a pelvic exam are as follows:\\n To examine your reproductive organs and determine if they are healthy\\n To screen for vaginal infections and sexually transmitted diseases (STD's)\\n To help determine what method of birth control is best for you\\n To check for early signs of cervical cancer, which can be treated and cured if found early\\n \\nPelvic exams and Pap smears may save nearly 16,000 women from dying of cervical cancer this year.\\n\\nPlease go to the website provided. It will explain in detail what to expect. It even gives you tips on how to make the exam more comfortable and what you can do to make sure you get accurate results.\\n\\nhttp://www.ppslr.org/Teenserv/Firstexam.htm" ]

[ "NPR's Larry Abramson reports on efforts in Congress and the public health system to bolster the medical system's preparedness for biological terrorism. It is widely believed now that the system is woefully unprepared for such an attack." ]

[ "<br />Guests: <br /><br /> <STRONG>Rona M. Fields</STRONG><br /> * Clinical and Consulting Psychologist <br /> * Associates in Community Psychology<br /> * Washington DC. <br /><br /> <STRONG>William E. Schlenger</STRONG><br /> * Director, Center for Risk Behavior and Mental Health Research<br /> * Research Triangle Institute<br /> * Research Triangle Park, North Carolina<br /><br /> <STRONG>Juesta M. Caddell</STRONG><br /> * Psychologist<br /> * Resarch Triangle Institute<br /> * Research Triangle Park, North Carolina<br /><br /> <STRONG>David Vlahov</STRONG><br /> * Director, Center for Urban Epidemiological Studies<br /> * New York Academy of Medicine<br /> * Adjunct Professor of Public Health<br /> * Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health<br /> * Columbia University<br /> * New York, New York<br /><br /> The words \"September 11\" are now synonymous with fear and terror. In this hour of <EM>Science Friday </EM>we'll take a look at the psychological effects of the attacks, in the days following the events, and a year later. How are we coping? Plus, a look at the use of cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana immediately following the attacks.", "This week, a fake \"dirty bomb\" was detonated in Seattle and a mock biological attack was launched in Chicago, both part of a terrorism drill. Join guest host David Kestenbaum and guests for a discussion about the simulated terrorism attacks. Plus, a discussion about a plan to send a probe on a journey to the center of the earth, and the latest on SARS from China. <BR><BR> Guests: <BR><BR> <STRONG>Richard Harris</STRONG><BR> *Science Correspondent, National Public Radio, Washington, D.C. <BR><BR> <STRONG>John McCormick</STRONG><BR> *General Assignment Reporter, <EM>Chicago Tribune</EM>, Chicago, Ill. <BR><BR> <STRONG>Dr. Bernard Turnock</STRONG><BR> *Clinical Professor, School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago<br /> *Director, Illinois Public Health Preparedness Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago <BR><BR> <STRONG>David Stevenson</STRONG><BR> *George Van Osdol Professor of Planetary Science, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. <BR><BR>", "Noah Adams talks with Michael Osterholm, director of University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota's Academic Health Center. Osterholm warns the U.S. is unprepared for the serious threats posed by chemical and biological terrorism. Osterholm is co-author of <EM>Living Terrors: What America Needs to Know to Survive the Coming Bioterrorist Catastrophe</EM>, published last year by Delacorte Press.", "Robert Siegel talks with Dr. John Reid, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, about comparisons between terrorism in Northern Ireland and al Qaeda terrorism. They discuss the merits of restricting civil liberties and public acceptance of curtailed freedoms. Reid says there are, of course, major differences. Terrorism in Ireland is within its own borders while the al Qaeda network is external to the United States. Reid also says the aims of al Qaeda can never be met politically.", "Scientists have been studying reactions to terrorist events, and how those reactions shape public policy. They found emotional response to terror attacks is often out of proportion to actual risk.", "The U.S. is in the midst of both a public health crisis and a health care crisis. Yet most people aren't aware these are two distinct things. And the response for each is going to be crucial. If you're not a health professional of some stripe, you might not realize that the nation's public health system operates, in large part, separately from the system that provides most people's medical care. Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a former deputy commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration and now vice dean at the school of public health at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, distinguishes the health care system from the public health system as \"the difference between taking care of patients with COVID and preventing people from getting COVID in the first place.\" In general, the health care system cares for patients individually, while public health is about caring for an entire population. Public health includes many things a population takes for granted, like clean air, clean water, effective sanitation, food that is safe to eat, as well as injury prevention, vaccines and other methods of ensuring the control of contagious and environmental diseases. In fact, it is public health, not advances in medical care, that has accounted for most of the increases in life expectancy during the past two centuries. Well before the advent of antibiotics and other 20th Century medical interventions, public-health activities around clean water, food safety and safer housing led to enormous gains. \"It's pretty invisible\" if the public health system is working well, said Sharfstein, who also once served as Maryland's state health secretary. \"It's the dog-that-doesn't-bark agency.\" But while public health isn't as flashy as a new drug or medical device or surgical procedure, it can simultaneously affect many more lives at once. \"I'm sure I saved more lives keeping Georgia's motorcycle law on the books than all the trauma resuscitations I did,\" said Dr. Arthur Kellermann, a former emergency room physician and public health researcher at Emory University in Atlanta. Still, because the public-health system mostly operates in the background, it rarely gets the attention — or funding — it deserves, until there's a crisis. Public health is \"a victim of its own success,\" said Jonathan Oberlander, a health policy researcher and professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. \"People can enjoy clean water and clean air but don't always attribute it to public health,\" he said. \"We pay attention to public health when things go awry. But we tend to pay not a lot of attention in the normal course of events.\" Public health as a scientific field was created largely to address the sort of problem the world is facing today. Sharfstein noted that Baltimore established the nation's first public health department in 1793 to address a yellow fever epidemic. But between emergencies, the public health domain is largely ignored. \"In the U.S., 97 cents of every health dollar goes to medical care,\" he said. \"Three cents goes to public health.\" It wasn't that long ago when rebuilding the nation's public health infrastructure was a top priority. In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the anthrax attacks a month later, Congress devoted significant time, attention and dollars to public health. Emerging from that flurry of activity from 2001 to 2004 was a bipartisan bill providing more than $4 billion to dramatically expand the nascent Strategic National Stockpile, to rebuild and modernize the capacity of state and local public-health departments to deal with public-health emergencies and to further protect the nation's supply of drinking water from potential terrorist attacks. Also created during that period was Project Bioshield, a federal program to provide incentives to private industry to develop vaccines and countermeasures for biological terror agents, as well as naturally occurring biological threats. But as the threat of biological terrorism seemed to wane, so did public-health funding from Congress and the states. After accounting for inflation, funding for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has decreased over the past decade, according to the Trust for America's Health, a nonpartisan research and advocacy group. And while the Affordable Care Act established a public-health fund worth $15 billion over 10 years — the Prevention and Public Health Fund ― it has been repeatedly raided by both parties in Congress to pay for other, sometimes non-health items. For example, the fund was cut by more than $1 billion in 2018 to help cover the costs of a bipartisan budget bill. Those choices on public health can come back to haunt us. Now, as the U.S. mourns the COVID-19 deaths of more than 61,000 people in less than two months, public-health professionals again have the attention of policymakers. The question for them is, how best to seize the moment? \"The trick is to put in solutions that will work for a long time,\" said", "As the nation prepares in earnest for a potential terror attack, public officials walk a fine line between informing people and generating panic. NPR's Pam Fessler reports.", "<br />Guests:<br /><br /> <STRONG>(Retired) Major General Mike Davidson </STRONG><br /> *Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for 3 years during Bush and the Clinton adminstrations and had significant responsibility for homeland security <br /><br /> <STRONG>Jon Hamilton</STRONG><br /> NPR Science Reporter <br /><br /> <STRONG>Secretary of Heath and Human Services, Tommy Thompson & Attorney General John Ashcroft Briefing From the Health and Human Services Department </STRONG>(regarding new anthrax case in N.Y.) <br /><br /> President Bush has pledged the U.S. committment to ending terrorism. The FBI is asking people to report any \"unusual or suspicious activity.\" Americans are on high alert for additional terrorist attacks. Join Neal Conan for the latest developments in the war against terrorism.", "Good morning, here are our early stories: -- Trump Says Transgender People Can't Serve In Military. -- French Wildfires Force 12,000 People To Flee Coastal Resort Areas. -- After A Year In Space, The Air Hasn't Gone Out Of NASA's Inflated Module. And here are more early headlines: The Senate Continues To Debate Health Care Reform. (New York Times) Duterte Threatens To Bomb Schools To Hit Militants. (Guardian) Survivor Of Deadly Human Smuggling Case Speaks. (Texas Public Radio) Missouri Lawmakers Pass Stricter Abortion Rules. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) European Union Court Rules Hamas Stays On Terror List. (Reuters) Report: North Korea ICBM Program Advancing Fast. (Washington Post)", "The administration is on a public-relations offensive in support of the war on terrorism. President Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others have all made the comparison between today's terrorist threat and yesterday's Nazi or fascist threat.", "The Food and Drug Administration has given full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Monday. This could help convince people who may have resisted the vaccine and lead to more mandates. Dr. Joshua Sharfstein of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health joins us. And, U.S. intelligence officials are concerned that the Islamic State could attack people trying to flee Kabul following the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. We get the latest with Charles Lister of the Countering Terrorism & Extremism Program at the Middle East Institute. Connect with us: Find more stories from today's show here. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to our podcast here. Email the show at letters@hereandnow.org", "The last ten minutes of Barack Obama's health care speech, invoking the legacy of Ted Kennedy and emphasizing concern for others as an essential part of \"the American character,\" were powerful and affecting. Eschewing the professorial tone he has too often struck when discussing health care in recent months, Obama spoke instead about \"large heartedness\" and the \"terror and helplessness\" any parent would feel to have a sick child go without treatment because of money. He also said \"the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little,\" and that \"without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, and the vulnerable can be exploited.\" This was not FDR in 1936 , but it was stated with conviction. Nobody who listened to the speech including many of the stone-faced Republicans in the audience could come away doubting Obama is serious about passing major health care legislation. But will this legislation include a public option? The speech left me dubious. In this portion of his otherwise stirring address, Obama sounded notably vague, almost apologetic, telling the members of Congress it was \"worth noting\" that a majority of Americans support a public option (um, yeah, one would think so), and then chiding those on the left and right who have exaggerated its significance. This was unfair to people on the left and the right, most of whom see the public option as significant (just as the health care industry does) for good reason. I suspect Obama's words heartened a great many insurance executives, and that they will lead, down the road, to a compromise that marks an improvement over the current system but also a missed opportunity.", "Americans' faith in the ability of government to reduce the threat of terrorism declined in the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing attempt aboard a Detroit-bound passenger jet, a new national survey shows. And though the survey by the Pew Research Center for People & the Press showed that Americans are more fearful of a terrorist attack now than they have been in a half-dozen years, the incident did not appear to affect President Obama's standing with the public. \"After any crisis, there's a certain rallying among the public and an awareness of how difficult these situations really are,\" says Michael Dimock, the center's associate director of research. \"People realize the risk and give the benefit of the doubt.\" \"But maybe the larger factor here is that there is a lot going on right now,\" he says. \"While this terrorism event certainly drew concern, it didn't necessarily change the big picture.\" That picture, he says, includes a struggling economy, debate over a health care overhaul and two wars. The telephone survey of 1,504 adults was conducted nearly two weeks after Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly set his underwear on fire in an attempt to ignite explosives on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam. Views On Obama Steady In the attack's aftermath, Obama, saying the buck stops with him, took responsibility for the national security system's failure to act on evidence in hand that pointed to Abdulmutallab as a terrorism threat. But those surveyed made clear that that incident did not affect their perception of how the president has addressed the terrorism issue. In fact, his approval job approval rating remained at 49 percent — the same as pre-attack. As he did in Pew's November survey, Obama continued to gets his highest approval marks for his handling of terrorism. Six in 10 of those surveyed say they think Obama is a strong leader, with 32 percent saying he isn't. Pew researchers found that though positive views about the president have slipped since he took office, more than 60 percent of Americans still find him trustworthy, and 57 percent say he's able to \"get things done.\" (Obama's rating on the issue of health care, however, plummeted to its lowest level, with just 38 percent of those surveyed characterizing it as his strongest issue. That's down from 51 percent in April of last year, before the acrimonious national debate on Congress' controversial health care overhaul legislation began.) Asked how safe from terrorism Obama's policies have made the United States, compared with those of former President George W. Bush, 46 percent said there is no difference. The response was up just 2 percentage points from a similar survey in June last year. Twenty-eight percent of those surveyed said Obama's policies have made the nation safer than it was under Bush, a response unchanged from six months ago. And 22 percent said it is now less safe, a 1 percentage point increase from June. Less Confidence In U.S. Tactics When asked how well the government is doing in reducing the threat of terrorism, the number of respondents who replied \"very or fairly well\" declined to 65 percent from 73 percent last November. And those who replied \"not to/or at all well\" spiked in the same period to 33 percent from 22 percent. \"It's a significant drop,\" Dimock says, \"but not into negative territory. People recognize that this is a tough job.\" Though many travelers have expressed at least some exasperation at the inconveniences and personal intrusion caused by increased airport screening and checks, a majority of those surveyed — 58 percent — said that government anti-terrorism policies hadn't gone far enough. That's up from 40 percent who said the same in a November survey. Pew researchers also found a lessening of concern about the potential for anti-terrorism policies to infringe on civil liberties. Just 27 percent said that anti-terrorism policies had \"gone too far in restricting civil rights,\" down from 36 percent in polls taken last year. But the public's taste and tolerance for steps that have civil liberties implications tend to ebb and flow over time, Dimock says. Right now, because of the recent attempted bombing, the balance has tipped toward security. So, though Obama's personal image remains strong, the mood of the American people continues to be gloomy, Dimock says, and the terrorism incident contributed to a pervasive feeling that not much of anything is going right. Though the survey shows that people haven't fundamentally lost confidence in Obama's ability to tackle problems. \"But the public mood affects Obama. Now these are his problems, not just what he inherited,\" he says.", "The Bush administration on Wednesday announced a national strategy for dealing with a potential influenza pandemic. Madeleine Brand talks to Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, about how the government can plan for and fight deadly health threats.", "NPR's Madeleine Brand reports on the reactions to yesterday's public hearings of the commission investigating the government's response to terrorism before and after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, particularly to the testimony of former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke.", "Linda Wertheimer talks to David Sterman, an expert on home-grown terrorism. He's with the New America Foundation.", "In San Diego, Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), who chairs the International Terrorism and Nonproliferation Subcommittee on International Relations, leads a public hearing on border vulnerabilities and international terrorism. The session is the latest in a series of meetings aimed at gathering public comment on proposed changes in U.S. immigration policies.", "We sent out the alert to travelers headed for the Netherlands last month that an eagle owl was targeting runners and other unsuspecting pedestrians in the town of Purmerend. The bird would take aim at human heads, inflicting wounds that required stitches, and prompting people to wear helmets and other protective gear. Now, the Guardian reports the skies are safe and the terror alert is cancelled: \"'The animal was trapped by a falconer today,' the Purmerend city council said on Friday evening. \"'It's in good health and is currently being kept in a temporary facility awaiting a transfer once a proper permanent home has been found,' it added.\" It's not that the Dutch town didn't like the owl. AP quotes Alderman Mario Hegger as saying said the municipality would have preferred to leave the \"magnificent bird of prey\" alone but \"it became too risky.\" The Dutch owl isn't the only one peeved with humans: Another one was keeping folks in Salem, Oregon, watching the skies and designing warning road signs, Oregon Public Broadcasting reports.", "In his relationship with the American public, President Bush has had one pillar of support that has been reliable in smooth times and rough: Since Sept. 11, 2001, Americans have had confidence in his handling of terrorism. The president's job approval ratings have risen and fallen. The situation in Iraq has looked at times optimistic, at times bleak. Interest in various issues -- taxes, education, stem cells, immigration, Medicare, Social Security -- has ebbed and flowed. But Mr. Bush could at any time talk about his \"war on terror\" -- as he did at the Republican National Convention last fall -- knowing that he was tapping into a seemingly bottomless well of public favor. It was a political resource without limit. The clearest example came in months before and after the invasion of Iraq. During the build-up to war, the president and his allies co-mingled references to Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction with references to Osama bin Laden and the war on terror. It wasn't hard to figure out why. A solid majority of Americans believed in Mr. Bush's leadership when it came to combating terrorism. And so long as that majority could be made to view Iraq as a battleground in that war, they would support the White House policy. Indeed, even as support for the war in Iraq slipped, Mr. Bush's standing as a leader in a war against terrorism remained strong. But is the pillar beginning to crumble? Consider some recent poll numbers. A survey taken this month by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that only 49 percent of Americans approve of Mr. Bush's handling of terrorist threats -- and 40 percent disapprove. Just six months ago, as the president was preparing for his second inaugural, 62 percent of Americans approved of his handling of terrorist threats according to the Pew poll. In June 2002, that number was 74 percent. A growing number of Americans also seem to be doubting not only Mr. Bush's leadership on specific issues, but also his truthfulness. In a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll this month, for the first time a majority -- 51 percent -- said the president and his administration \"deliberately misled\" the public about whether Iraq possessed WMD. Perhaps even more telling than poll numbers, though, are the changing tone and language heard from administration officials. Can the war on terror really be won? And if it by nature cannot truly be ended, does it make sense to keep using that phrase? Is it still a helpful public relations tool? Karen Hughes, Mr. Bush's longtime confidante awaiting Senate confirmation as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, had this to say at a recent confirmation hearing: \"In the long run, the only way we're going to win the war against terror is to have little boys and little girls across the world grow up with a greater sense of tolerance and understanding of each other and of our country. And it's very troubling to me, my fellow Americans -- I know it is to you and members of this committee -- this rise that some of the polls are showing in some anti-Americanism.\" In a similar vein, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers stressed in a recent speech at the National Press Club that the war on terrorism \"is not easy business.\" \"I've... I've objected to the use of the term 'war on terrorism' before,\" Myers added. \"If you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution. And it's more than terrorism.... Violent extremists [are] the real enemy here, and terror is the method they use.\" That's why we now hear the administration substituting a new phrase, the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism, for war on terror. In an administration that typically designs a public message and then sticks to it fanatically, it's extraordinary to hear even hints of public soul-searching, or to hear officials express worry about the path ahead. Last August, in the heat of the presidential campaign, Mr. Bush was asked in an NBC interview whether the war on terror was winnable. \"I don't think you can win it,\" he replied. \"But I think you can create conditions so that... those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world, let's put it that way.\" The words had hardly left his mouth and the White House was crafting a way to clear up any doubt about the commander in chief's confidence. The next day, Mr. Bush said in Nashville, \"Make no mistake about it, we are winning, and we will win. We will win by staying on the offensive. We will win by spreading liberty.\" At that time, the president was preparing for the Republican National Convention in New York, an event that would be drenched in his terrorism theme. The White House clearly believed if there was any chink in the armor, the ultimate political weapon could be undermined. But now, a year later, the administration seems to be acknowledging a new reality: Support for the president's anti-terrorism policy may not be the political trump card it once was. The", "Rescue and recovery workers who toiled in the dust, smoke and fumes that engulfed Lower Manhattan after Sept. 11 were less likely to have died since the terrorist attacks of 2001 than colleagues who weren't exposed, according to new research. That also holds true for people who were exposed because they lived or worked in the area. That surprising news comes from the World Trace Conference Health Registry, a huge effort to track how the health of rescue and recovery workers and residents of New York City has been affected by the terrorist attack. But it will take more time to get a clearer sense of deaths caused by the disaster. Non-rescue workers who suffered the most exposure were more likely to have died in the past 10 years than were people who suffered light exposures. But that didn't hold true for the first responders and recovery workers. This new study was published in The Lancet. It's the first peer-reviewed study of deaths caused by exposure to the Sept. 11 site. \"It is the best way we could ever counter the fear and terror of that day: with data,\" wrote James Feeney, associate director of trauma at Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, Conn., who co-authored a commentary on the mortality study. \"Terrorists rely on fear and doubt to incite terror; today, however, scientific method triumphs.\" Continue Reading But as with so much in science, the data raise more questions. The assumption has always been that the tens of thousands of people exposed to the Ground Zero contaminants, which contained carcinogens like benzene, would have more health problems in the years after Sept. 11. Other studies have found that to be true, and other articles in this same issue of The Lancet found that rescue workers at the site had persistent health problems, including depression and PTSD, and a 19 percent increase in cases of cancer. There was no increase in cases of lung cancer, which is also a surprise. So Shots called up Feeney and asked how the death rate could be lower for people who had been directly exposed to the aftermath of the attacks. \"It's a real puzzle,\" he said. One reason could be that the people who volunteer for long-term medical studies tend to be healthier than the general population. Hannah Jordan, the lead author of the Lancet study and deputy medical director of the WTC Health Registry, told Shots that volunteers for health studies are almost always healthier than the general public. People who are employed are usually healthier, too. The 13,337 workers and 28,593 non-workers in the study all volunteered. Jordan said the \"healthy volunteer\" and \"healthy worker\" effect should diminish over time. Another reason is that the illnesses that have been most common in people exposed, such as respiratory illnesses and PTSD, take years to lead to death, if they do at all. More time will help solve some of these puzzles. The WTC Registry is designed to track the health of the people directly affected by Sept. 11 for at least 20 years, Jordan says. That should give a much clearer picture of long-term risks such as cancer and heart disease.", "NPR's Alex Chadwick talks to David Ropeik, a professor at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, about whether the U.S. terror alert system accurately conveys the real risk of terrorism to the American public.", "The FBI says hospitals in four major U.S. cities might be the target of terrorists. Authorities say threats indicate that attacks could occur between December and April in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Houston and Chicago. Jason Lopez reports.", "For a closer look at the deadliest terror attack on London soil since World War II, NPR's Ed Gordon talks with Harry \"Skip\" Brandon, a former deputy assistant director of counterterrorism for the FBI and Jessica Stern, a public policy lecturer at Harvard and author of <EM>Terror in the Name of God.</EM>", "Those who vaccinate children in Pakistan risk their lives. Correspondent Philip Reeves tells NPR's Rachel Martin that the Taliban is gunning down health workers, who are suspected of being spies.", "Hurricane Katrina, soaring gas prices and events in Iraq captured the attention of the American public the most in 2005, according to an analysis of public opinion trends from the Pew Research Center. Pew Director Andy Kohut discusses what the public was and wasn't thinking about this past year. Top 10 Public Opinion Trends of 2005 1. Presidential Popularity Plunge –- Starting his second term with less popular support than other recent re-elected incumbents, President George W. Bush saw his approval ratings further erode under pressure from public opposition to his foreign and domestic policies and a new focus on alleged ethical lapses in his administration. In November, Bush's approval rating hit new lows: Just 36 percent of the public thought he had lived up to his campaign pledge to restore integrity to the White House; and for the first time, as many approved as disapproved of his handling of terrorism. By December, upbeat economic reports, apparently successful elections in Iraq and a series of high-profile speeches shored up the president's approval rating in some major polls, though not in others. However, a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll found that by a 47 percent-38 percent margin, the public judged that this year, the president would make Santa's \"naughty,\" rather than \"nice\" list, up from the 40 percent who thought so a year ago and 31 percent in 2003. 2. Hurricane Blowback –- Most Americans gave the federal government a failing grade on its handling of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath. But the crisis revealed a sharp racial divide, with two-thirds of blacks saying the government's response would have been faster had most victims been white; only 17 percent of whites agreed. A month later, while a growing number saw the nation increasingly divided between \"haves\" and \"have nots,\" as many Americans worried that the government would spend too much on hurricane relief as feared that it would spend too little. 3. Iraq Disillusionment –- Following a small post-election bounce, public approval of the president's handling of the situation in Iraq resumed its downward drift, hitting a low of 37 percent in October. But opinions on Iraq remain volatile: Americans are nearly evenly divided on whether the decision to use military force was right or wrong, and more than half think it possible that the U.S. can establish a stable democracy in Iraq. In the wake of Democratic congressman's John Murtha's high-profile call for a withdrawal plan and a series of presidential speeches in rebuttal, Bush's approval rating on Iraq remained mired in the mid-30s. 4. Pump Shock and Economy Anxiety –- Even before hurricanes in the Gulf added momentum to already rising gas prices, the public remained apprehensive about the economy. In May, only 44 percent of Americans rated their personal financial situation good or excellent, down from 51 percent in January; only 35 percent approved of the president's handling of the economy. In Katrina's wake, fully 71 percent of the public (the most in two decades) reported following news about gas prices very closely. As prices receded and economic reports re-brightened in December, prices at the pump were still closely watched by 61 percent of the public, and 40 percent of Americans said they were finding it hard to make ends meet. 5. Inward Turn –- Isolationist sentiment was on the upswing, with more than four-in-10 among the public saying America should \"mind its own business internationally\" -- on par with numbers expressing that view after the closing of the Vietnam War and the Cold War. Two-thirds of Americans say the country is less respected globally; most blame the Iraq war for that result. 6. Domestic Issues Ascendant –- While terrorism still ranked high among the public's concerns, domestic priorities rose in prominence in the public mind. At the start of 2005, Americans already disagreed with White House priorities -- tax cuts, tax simplification, tort reform; they ranked Social Security, health care, aid to the poor and the budget deficit as more important. By October, half of the public said Bush should give domestic issues priority over the war on terrorism, and a large majority (69 percent) said the next president should offer different policies. 7. Schiavo Backlash –- Public opinion delivered a surprise verdict on a bill rushed into law by Congress in March that would have required federal courts to intervene in a state court decision allowing removal of a feeding tube from a long-comatose Florida woman. Initial reaction was highly negative, and four months later, three-quarters of the public still felt that Congress should have stayed out of the case, a view essentially unchanged late in the year. 8. Evolution Devolution –- As proponents of \"intelligent design\" pressed to have their theory more widely taught, many in the media and in the public as well were surprised to find that a majority of Americans rejected natural selection and other tenets of the theory of evo", "Weapons of mass destruction remain the greatest threat to national security today, according to former Sen. Sam Nunn and Harvard's Ashton Carter. The two security experts, part of the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, warn that too much nuclear material remains unsecured. Nunn and Carter recommended a centralized organization -- akin to the new National Counter-Terrorism Center -- that would coordinate intelligence and plan operations to rein in the world's deadliest weapons. They spoke at a panel discussion on terrorism organized by the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, the successor organization of the 9/11 Commission, and the Center for National Policy.", "and the Republican Congressional leadership including Republican presidential frontrunner, Bob Dole. The President called for the meeting at the White House to seek common ground on the balanced budget, health insurance, welfare reform, and anti-terrorism legislation.", "Good morning. We start out with some news today -- President Obama has nominated Dr. Thomas Frieden, Commissioner of New York City's Health Department, to be the new Director of the CDC. \"America relies on a strong public health system and the work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is critical to our mission to preserve and protect the health and safety of our citizens,\" Obama said in a statement announcing the appointment. \"Dr. Frieden is an expert in preparedness and response to health emergencies, and has been at the forefront of the fight against heart disease, cancer and obesity, infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and AIDS, and in the establishment of electronic health records,\" he added. Obama also thanked acting-Director Rich Besser and \"the women and men throughout the CDC for their superb work, especially over the past weeks.\" The president said he was \"pleased\" that Besser would be returning to his old position leading the CDC's Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response. Updated 12:14pm: NPR's Richard Knox elaborates on the choice of Frieden: He'll jump into a thicket of problems in deciding whether to make and distribute a vaccine against a potentially pandemic flu virus. He'll be at the forefront of efforts to make the food supply safer. He's expected to nationalize his aggressive campaign to regulate smoking. In New York City, Frieden led a crusade to ban smoking in restaurants and bars. He pushed doctors to make H-I-V testing routine. And he got the health department to track undiagnosed diabetics like an infectious disease. Read More &gt;&gt; More News: -- Wall Street Journal -- Senate Panel Starts Talking Health Overhaul:The Senate Finance Committee yesterday were briefed on the major points of the evolving health care overhaul and one top Republican \"hinted\" there may be room for compromise on the hotly debated issue of creating a public option plan. \"I don't want to say it's a problem when you've got three or four different ways of compromising it,\" ranking Republican Charles Grassley said. \"We might be able to find a consensus.\" -- Reuters -- WHO Chief Warns Against False Security About Flu:Speaking at an intergovernmental meeting on pandemics in Geneva, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan warned against complacency about the swine flu, saying there remains \"great uncertainty\" despite the apparently mild toll of the virus thus far. \"We are meeting at a time of crisis that could have global implications,\" Chan said. -- Associated Press -- Virus Spurred High Blood Pressure In Mice:New research by Harvard scientists \"suggest that a common virus might play a role in high blood pressure.\" The work \"so far is only in mice -- and the usually symptomless infection is so widespread that proving an effect in people will be tough. Still, it's the latest clue that infections may somehow affect a number of the factors that lead to heart disease, from stiffening arteries to obesity.\"", "William Galston is a contributing editor for The New Republic. The emerging conventional wisdom among many Democrats takes the form of two equations: 2012 = 2004, and Bain = Swift Boats. There's also a supporting narrative: The negative campaign against John Kerry fatally weakened his candidacy, securing the victory of an incumbent who could not have won based on his own record. And so, the idea goes, a president whose performance the public doesn't much like can power his way to a narrow, less than pretty win by eviscerating his challenger. But the evidence in favor of all of these propositions is remarkably thin. The basic structure of the 2004 campaign differed fundamentally from the one we're now enduring. The available evidence suggests that even in the short-term, the attacks on Romney have been measurably less successful than were those on Kerry. And Obama's supporters seem to have forgotten that the reason Bush prevailed was because enough Americans ended up approving of his record and leadership in the areas they cared about the most. In 2012, there is a single dominant issue — the economy. The people are trying to decide whether Obama has managed our economic challenges well enough to deserve another four years and, if not, whether Romney's economic experience and plans make him an acceptable alternative. In 2004, by contrast, there was no single dominant issue. An NBC/WSJ survey published a few days before the election found 24 percent naming terrorism as the single most important issue, followed closely by the economy (22 percent), the war in Iraq (also 22), and social issues and values (17). A CBS/NYT survey conducted not long after the election asked the respondents to name the one single consideration that had mattered the most as they cast their votes. The answers were all over the map. At the top was George W. Bush himself, with 13 percent, following by war (12 percent), Iraq (11), the economy and jobs (9), terrorism (8), and moral values (6). Indeed, the 2004 election featured a struggle to define the agenda. Democrats focused on the economy and health care, while Republicans emphasized terrorism and values. In mid-September the public was split down the middle, 44-44, on the relative importance of these two baskets of issues. The people saw Bush as significantly more able to handle the former, and Kerry the latter. So the fact that by the eve of the election fully 50 percent had come to see the issues where Bush was strong as more important contributed to the late surge that put him over the top. 52 percent of the people thought that Bush would do a better job dealing with terrorism and homeland security, versus 29 percent for Kerry; they preferred Bush on Iraq, 50 to 37; on moral values, by 47 to 29. Kerry led 48 to 32 on jobs and unemployment and by an even wider margin of 51 to 28 on health care, but by Election Day those issues didn't top the concerns of enough voters. But what about the notorious \"Swift-boating\" of the decorated Vietnam veteran who headed the Democratic ticket? Most surveys suggest that it did drive down Kerry's support in August of 2004. The RealClearPolitics survey average showed a decline from 48 percent at the beginning of the month to 45 percent at the end. But according to a detailed Pew report released in mid-September, the effects of that attack waned significantly in the two weeks after Labor Day. Kerry continued his gradual climb throughout the remainder of the campaign, finishing with a share of the popular vote slightly higher than his early August peak in the polls. Moreover, many of the negative impressions of Kerry were long-standing, not the product of the Republicans' summer assault. For example, as early as mid-March Bush led Kerry by 52 to 34 percent as a strong leader and by 63 to 27 percent in his perceived willingness to take and maintain an unpopular stance. According to CBS/NYT survey released on the eve of the election, 60 percent of respondents felt that Kerry said what he thought people wanted to hear rather than what he really believed. But that can't be attributed to the mid-summer Republican attacks, because 61 percent felt that way as early as April and never changed their minds. (By contrast, 60 percent felt that Bush said what they believed — again, an impression they formed early on and never revised.) Because the Republican assault on Kerry focused so heavily on his service in Vietnam and subsequent anti-war activities, one might have expected it to undermine the public's confidence in his ability to serve as commander-in-chief. But the evidence suggests that just the reverse occurred during the course of the campaign. In May, only 34 percent expressed confidence in Kerry as a potential commander-in-chief, while 61 percent expressed reservations ranging from moderate to intense. But Kerry's stature grew steadily, even during the summer-long attack on his military record. By mid-October, the share of the electorate who felt confident", "Counterterrorism specialists are trying to predict the most likely places that terrorists might try to strike again. Some government officials say that one of the most vulnerable targets in America is farm animals. They say if terrorists triggered a disease outbreak in a pen full of cattle, it could cause more economic damage than the attacks on Sept. 11. Daniel Zwerdling reports for NPR News and American Radio Works.", "After years of legislative gridlock, the victim compensation fund has been extended to ensure permanent funding for rescue workers whose jobs after the terror attacks caused health problems.", "The White House, bowing to mounting pressure from both Republicans and Democrats, agrees to allow National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify -- in public, and under oath -- before a bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The decision follows former anti-terror coordinator Richard Clarke's statements criticizing the Bush administration. NPR's Pam Fessler reports." ]

[ "Mattel launched the store in March 2009 - Barbie's 50th birthday - in an attempt to expand the market for its famous doll into China.\nThe store was spread across six floors, replete with a staircase decorated by 875 Barbie dolls and a Barbie bar.\nMattel was hoping to offset falling sales in traditional markets hit by the financial crisis.\nHowever sales failed to meet expectations and the firm was forced to cut its targets within the first eight months of the store's existence.\n\"Barbie in the US has a very long history, people grow up with the brand, their parents grow up with the brand, so brand recognition is very high. In China, though, nobody really knew what Barbie stood for,\" said Ben Cavender, an analyst with China Market Research.\nChallenging market\nInternational firms have been using Shanghai as a test market for their expansion into China and Mattel is not the only retailer to have had difficulty in adjusting to the Shanghai marketplace.\nIn February, electronics retailer Best Buy closed all of its brand name stores in Shanghai and will instead focus on its local Jiangsu Five Star Appliance group of stores.\n\"What it definitely says is that it is a challenging market... for foreign retailers, it is a very hard market to get correct. They either don't change quickly enough or they are not patient enough to be successful here,\" Mr Cavender said.\nMattel said it remained committed to developing the Barbie brand in China and would launch a new campaign across the country later this year." ]

[ "Hasbro, the maker of My Little Pony, approached Mattel about a deal late last year, according to Bloomberg news.\nThe combination of the two toy-makers would produce a company with a $20bn market capitalization as of Wednesday.\nIn 1996, Mattel made a $5.2bn (£3.5bn) offer to buy Hasbro, but the two sides failed to reach a final agreement.\nOver the last few years, Mattel has lost market share to Hasbro and Denmark's Lego. Lego overtook Mattel as the world's largest toy-marker in 2014.\nIn its most recent quarter, Mattel reported a 4% drop in worldwide sales and expects sales to decline this year.\nThat is partly because Hasbro has taken over the contract to produce toys based on the Disney movie Frozen, and toys sold under the Princess brand.\nMattel estimated in 2014 that the Princess brand brought in $300m.\nIn an effort to boost sales of its Barbie line, Mattel introduced three new body types and seven new skin tones in January. Sales of Barbie dolls fell 10% globally in 2015.\nNeither company has commented on the rumoured deal.\nHasbro's share price rose 1.5%. In afternoon trading, Mattel shares fell back and were trading up 1.6% on the day.\nHasbro reports its full-year earnings report on 8 February.", "The dolls have different skin tones and hairstyles, including a man bun, and corn rows.\nThe move comes after Mattel expanded its Barbie range at the beginning of 2016.\nBarbie sales slumped 13% in the first quarter, the second consecutive quarter of falling sales for the doll brand.\n\"By continuing to expand our product line, we are redefining what a Barbie or Ken doll looks like to this generation,\" said Barbie general manager Lisa McKnight.\n\"Evolving Ken was a natural evolution for the brand and allows girls to further personalise the role they want him to play in Barbie's world.\"\nMattel, which is one of the world's biggest toy companies, said the Barbie brand \"has always reflected the times, so modernising Ken is the next step in the brand's evolution to offer more diverse products\".\nBarbie sales increased for the first nine months of 2016, aided by new marketing efforts and the launch of the dolls.\nThe new Ken dolls will be sold through various UK national retailers.\nMattel launched Ken, full name Ken Carson, as Barbie's boyfriend in 1961.\nAccording to the fictional back story of Ken and Barbie, they met on the set of their first television commercial in 1961. He has always stood half an inch taller than her.\nThe two original versions had him with moulded plastic hair in either blond or brown, and wearing red swimming trunks and cork sandals.\nKen has been marketed as having some 40 occupations and modelling a range of the decades' fashions, including 1993's Magic Earring Ken.\nAs part of Mattel marketing efforts, Ken and Barbie \"broke up\" with each other on Valentine's Day in 2004, and then got back together on Valentine's Day 2011.\nThe two have never officially been married, a Mattel spokeswoman said, although they have been sold in \"dream wedding\" sets.\nThe marketing hasn't been overly romantic as it is aimed at children, she said.\nThe spokeswoman declined to say how much Mattel had spent on market research and manufacturing to launch the new Ken dolls.", "29 January 2016 Last updated at 07:34 GMT\nMattel, the US company who make the toy, is adding \"tall, curvy and petite\" body shapes to its line-up.\nDifferent skin tones, eye colours and hair styles will also be added, the company said.\nMany people had complained that the traditional Barbie size was unhealthy, creating an unrealistic body image for girls.\nWith the new body shapes, the toy makers say they are \"offering girls choices that are more reflective of the world they see today\".", "Net income at the company fell to $223.8m (£145m) in the three months to September, down from $331.8m a year earlier, while Barbie doll sales fell by 4%.\nThe stronger dollar also hurt revenue from overseas markets.\nThe chief executive, Christopher Sinclair, said the results were \"broadly in line\" with expectations.\nThe company has been struggling as children increasingly turn to electronic games and tablets. This is the eighth consecutive quarter of declining sales for the 56-year-old Barbie brand.\n\"We're very encouraged by the progress we are making on reenergizing the company,\" Mr Sinclair said.\n\"As we continue our turnaround efforts, we remain comfortable with our full-year outlook.\"\nNearly half of Mattel's revenue came from international markets last year and Mr Sinclair expects the strong dollar to \"continue to be a headwind\".", "The US company behind the famous toy, Mattel, is adding \"tall, curvy and petite\" body shapes to its line-up of the fashion dolls.\nSeveral skin tones, eye colours and hair styles will also be added to the collection, the company said.\nBarbie's figure has come under fire for years, with critics arguing it set an unrealistic body image for girls.\nWith the new body shapes, the toy makers say they are \"offering girls choices that are more reflective of the world they see today\".\nLast year, the company introduced 23 new dolls to its so-called Fashionistas line with varied skin and hair colours, and a much touted flat foot - replacing Barbie's signature heels.\nWith this year's update, the Barbie Fashionistas line will feature:\n\"We are excited to literally be changing the face of the brand - these new dolls represent a line that is more reflective of the world girls see around them - the variety in body type, skin tones and style allows girls to find a doll that speaks to them,\" Mattel executive Evelyn Mazzocco said in a statement.\nSome took to Twitter to hail the move:\nOthers questioned light-heartedly when the same would happen for Ken, the fictional toy boyfriend of Barbie.\nThe new dolls will go on sale in the spring of 2016 worldwide.\nHowever, true to life, Mattel warned that \"not all clothes will fit all dolls\".\nBarbie Millicent Roberts is a woman with a very controversial reputation and mostly it stems from her long legs, tiny waist, ample bosom, slender neck and flowing blonde locks.\nSome argue her body shape would be unobtainable and unsustainable if scaled up to life-size. They claim she would not be able to stand up because her body frame would be so unbalanced. A real life Barbie would simply fall over.\nRead more from BBC Magazine (March 2009)", "The perennially popular plastic brick maker grew sales by 6% to 37.9bn Danish kroner ($5.38bn; £4.42bn), a slowdown from 25% growth the year before.\nFinance chief John Goodwin said its \"performance up to 2016 has been absolutely phenomenal, some would say supernatural\".\nBut he said it slowed last year to more \"sustainable levels of growth\".\nSales were strong in the UK and other European markets, but were flat in the US despite a significant increase in marketing.\nThe Star Wars Millennium Falcon was its best-selling toy again, ahead of the Amusement Park Roller Coaster and the Porsche 911 GTS RS.\nBali Padda, the new chief executive of the Danish firm, said it would seek to improve results in the US this year.\nMr Padda, who is from the UK and is the first non-Dane to run the business, also said Lego continued to \"see strong potential in China\".\nChina is a major part of Mr Padda's growth strategy, but the firm has warned that copycat Lego toys are a major problem in the country.\nIn an interview with the BBC in December, the boss of Lego's new Chinese factory could not tell the difference between a real and a fake Lego figurine.\nWorldwide, Lego sold more than 75 billion parts, 3,700 shapes and launched 335 new sets last year.\nHowever, US toymaker Mattel had sales of $5.46bn, staying ahead of Lego even though its sales declined by 4%.\nHasbro, which makes My Little Pony and Nerf guns, was the world's third largest toymaker with $5.02bn in sales last year.", "The supermarket has given Sindy a new look and made her seven inches taller.\nSindy was created as a British girl-next-door alternative to the more glamorous US Barbie doll and at the peak of her popularity in 1985 had an 80% share of the fashion doll market.\n\"We've restored her beautiful and unique look,\" said Tesco's head toy buyer Dawn Lavalette.\n\"We worked with our own top fashion designers to come up with a dazzling new range of clothes.\n\"We also think that many mums out there, who were fans of the original doll themselves, will secretly want one too.\"\nSindy, now 18 inches tall, will have 11 outfits, eight pairs of shoes and accessories while she will also have the company of three friends - Zoe, Kate and Laura.\nMs Lavalette added: \"This is just the start of the Sindy revival and next year we will have a whole range of exciting additions for customers to add to their collection, including more playsets and stylish outfits.\"\nSindy's popularity declined in the second half of the 1980s as more Barbie dolls began to be sold.\nAfter a makeover made Sindy look more like her American rival, there were legal battles with Mattel, the makers of Barbie, who felt their product was being copied.\nSindy was changed again but the sales slump continued and the end of Woolworths was also the death knell for Sindy - until now.", "The Oscar-winning picture made $1.27bn (£857m) at box offices worldwide, and led to record sales of related merchandise.\nFrozen 2 will reunite the team behind the original feature, including director Chris Buck, writer Jennifer Lee and producer Peter Del Vecho.\nThe studio did not name a release date.\nShares in parent company Walt Disney were up by almost 4% following the news.\nToy-maker Mattel, which currently owns the license to sell Frozen products, saw its shares rise by almost 5%.\nLast month, Disney credited the continuing success of toys based on Frozen for an \"incredibly strong quarter\".\nNet income rose 19% to $2.2bn (£1.5bn) in the three-month period, with revenues up 9% to $13.4bn - both figures better than forecast.\nIn December, Frozen became iTunes' biggest-selling movie of all time, while the soundtrack sold more than any other album in the US in 2014.\nAdditionally, DVD and Blu-ray sales of the animation broke the three million mark on the first day of their release.", "The move would increase the number of its stores in the world's second largest economy by almost a third.\n\"Our aim is to become an integral part of China's economy,\" chief executive Doug McMillon said at a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday.\nThe push for expansion in China comes as the Asian giant's growth continues to slow.\nIn February, Walmart said its net sales in China fell 0.7% for the three months to January from a year ago.\nThe new stores would open in major cities such as Shanghai, Shenzhen and Wuhan from this year and create 30,000 more jobs, the company said. It also plans to spend $60m (£39m) to remodel more than 50 stores this year.\nWalmart currently has 411 stores in China, according to its annual report.\nBut it also said it plans to close some under-performing stores and focus more on the fast-growing online grocery market.", "Yum's Chinese same-store sales fell by more than expected in the second quarter, by 10% despite efforts to regain ground in its biggest market after a meat safety scandal last year.\nGlobally, revenue fell 3% to $3.1bn in the three months to 13 June.\nThe firm said its main initiative right now was to get back on track in China.\n\"The China division remains on track to open at least 700 new restaurants this year, laying the groundwork for future growth,\" said chief executive Greg Creed in a statement on Tuesday.\nThe group's KFC restaurants suffered in July last year after a television news story linked the brand to supplier Shanghai Husi Food, which was accused of selling old meat.\nKFC, along with fast food giant McDonald's, stopped using meat from the supplier after its operations were suspended in July.\nAdding to its China woes, customers in its home market - the US - are also shifting their eating habits to food seen to be healthier, served by competitors like Shake Shack and Chipotle Mexican Grill.\nThe retailer's net income declined 30% to $235m (£150m) in the same period.\nThe company has been trying to win back customers with moves such as removing artificial colours and flavours from food at Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, it announced in May.\nIts shares fell 1% in after-hours trading in New York after the earnings results came out.\nCorrection: This story has been amended to make clear that the Shanghai Husi scandal involved allegations of supplying out-of-date, rather than tainted, meat.", "The S&P 500 technology sector dropped 0.5% after declines in index heavyweights such as Apple, Microsoft and Facebook.\nThe fall follows a two-day selloff that started Friday.\nInvestors have been profit-taking in a sector that had risen 16.7% this year, outperforming other sectors.\nThe tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 0.47%, to 6,16.5 points and and the S&P 500 index fell 0.22% to 2,432.46 points.\nThe Dow Jones was steadier, closing down 0.07% at 21,359.9 points.\n\"Stocks have been at all-time highs and valuations are somewhat priced to perfection so a little bit of a pullback is not too surprising,\" said Myles Clouston, senior director at Nasdaq Advisory Services in New York.\n\"We may see the market take a breather in the next few sessions, but it is not necessarily doom and gloom.\"\nNike was among the biggest losers on Thursday, after the sportswear maker announced a restructuring plan that includes cutting 2% of its workforce and the number of shoe styles by a quarter.\nThe company said it would focus on key brands such as ZoomX, Air VaporMax and Nike React. The firm's shares fell 3.2%.\nOn the S&P, the supermarket chain Kroger plunged almost 18.9% after cutting its full-year profit forecast, while Toy maker Mattel fell 6.7% after cutting its dividend.", "The draft Investigatory Powers Bill would place a legal duty on internet providers to assist in hacking devices.\nBut it would not be restricted to phones and PCs, a tech industry chief told the Commons science and technology committee.\nAntony Walker, of techUK, said anything that connected to the internet could \"in theory\" be hacked into.\nIn the future, this could include driverless cars or household appliances connected to the internet - the so-called Internet of Things - said Mr Walker.\nHe said the Home Office needed to spell out more clearly where it draws the line over what it calls \"equipment interference\", highlighting recent concerns about \"smart toys\" that connect to the internet and have microphones and cameras built-in.\n\"A range of devices that have been in the news recently, in relation to a hack, are children's toys, that children can interact with,\" he told the committee.\n\"These are devices that may sit in a child's bedroom but are accessible.\n\"In theory, the manufacturer of those products could be the subject of a warrant to enable equipment interference with those devices.\n\"So the potential extent, I think, is something that needs to be carefully considered.\"\nIn November, electronic toy company Vtech had its app store database hacked, allegedly resulting in the appearance online of personal data including children's names, dates of birth and gender.\nTalking dolls, such as Hello Barbie and My Friend Cayla, have also been put under scrutiny by security experts in recent months.\nBarbie manufacturer Mattel reportedly made modifications to Hello Barbie, which allows children to talk to the doll over a cloud server connection, after concerns were raised about cyber attackers potentially stealing data through it.\nThe police, security services, HM Revenue and Customs and other law enforcement agencies can already hack into devices provided they get a warrant.\nThis allows them to download the contents of computers or smartphones, track locations, listen to calls, or even switch on microphones and cameras, allowing officers to listen in to conversations or take pictures of those standing nearby.\nThe Home Office says these powers, the existence of which were revealed earlier this year following a court case, have \"made a vital contribution to counter the increased threat to the UK from Islamist terrorism and have also enabled the disruption of paedophile-related crime\", according to a Home Office fact sheet.\nThe draft Investigatory Powers Bill would put \"equipment interference\" warrants on a firmer legal footing and make sure they are \"only used when necessary and proportionate for a legitimate purpose\".\nA revised bill will be introduced to Parliament in the New Year, following consultation and scrutiny by the industry and other interested parties.\nMr Walker, whose organisation represents 850 UK technology firms, told MPs it needed to be more forward-looking and less vague about the limits of surveillance.\n\"When we start to think, not just about the world today, but the world in five, 10 years' time as the Internet of Things becomes more real, and more pervasive.\n\"I think it requires careful thought in terms of where the limits should be.\"", "In 2009 the world's largest toy maker, US firm Mattel, set its sights firmly on the Chinese market, opening a flagship store in Shanghai.\nIt was using a toy that in her 50 years had conquered all before her.\nCreated in 1959, Barbie is today sold in 150 countries and has won the hearts and minds of little girls as far afield as Mumbai and Buenos Aires.\nShe has thrived almost everywhere, despite regular criticism from feminist groups who have decried her influence on young girls' body image and ambitions. Even in markets where she is triumphant Barbie continues to court controversy.\nBut it is in China, arguably the most important consumer market in the world, where the all-conquering doll has stumbled on her kitten heels.\nThe Shanghai Barbie store closed in 2011, just two years after its grand opening.\nNow, as Barbie attempts to crack China once again, has Mattel learnt from its earlier failure?\nThe 2009 opening of the Shanghai store was not done by half measures.\nIt was not so much a shop as a lifestyle concept.\nA grand spiral staircase surrounded by more than 800 different Barbies climbed the building.\nAnd it was not just aimed at children.\nMattel was marketing the Barbie lifestyle to women in their 20s.\nClothing lines for women as well as young girls were part of the key products.\nReal life brides-to-be were invited to coo over a Vera Wang Barbie wedding dress.\n\"It was confusing,\" says Benjamin Cavender of China Market Research Group.\n\"No-one knew what the brand stood for and so instead of going for cute they went towards sexy.\"\nAs well as clothes and design-your-own dolls, shoppers could eat in the Barbie restaurant, relax in the Barbie Spa and drink in the Barbie cocktail lounge.\nBut the problem was not enough people knew who Barbie was.\n\"It wasn't like in other countries where generations of women had grown up with Barbie,\" Mr Cavendar says.\n\"They created this massive experience but not enough people came to find out about it as the concept of Barbie wasn't a pre-existing draw in China.\"\nThe massive store was located on Huaihai Road, one of the most prestigious shopping streets in Shanghai.\nBut on the ground floor it was not clear to anyone passing exactly what was inside - you had to enter the store and climb an escalator to feel the impact of the design.\nBreaking into a new market is never easy but many have achieved massive success far from home.\nThe BBC's global business team meet those who have managed to break into the fast growing global markets and find out what secrets they have learnt about how to succeed in them.\nHow to succeed in...\nPlus a pink light shone outside. In China, a pink light district is associated with a much more adult style of trade than selling toys and clothes.\nAnd despite the location being sought after, it wasn't easily accessible for shoppers.\n\"There was nowhere to park your car and it was not near a subway station,\" says Mr Cavender.\n\"If you can't get to it and you don't already know about Barbie, you're just not going to go.\"\n\"Joy and learning are like oil and water in China,\" a Mattel executive recently told the Wall Street Journal.\nHis point was that the first time round Barbie may have been too frivolous for the Chinese market.\nThe toy market in China, however, is big - and growing.\nBetween 2009 and 2013, it nearly doubled in size to be worth about £5.5bn (53.8bn yuan; $8.7bn), according to Euromonitor.\nVideo games are far and away the biggest category in the market.\nBut Mattel has done well - as a company it is the fifth biggest toy maker in China with 1.4% of the overall market.\nIts most successful offering is the more learning-oriented Fisher Price brand, the 14th biggest toy brand in China, according to Euromonitor. And Barbie could be going the same way.\nIn 2013 Mattel brought Barbie back to the Chinese market. Only this time instead of clothes by Oscar De La Renta she had a violin and you could buy Barbie for the much more affordable price of $13 (£8.20).\nThis year there was another launch - a \"specialty\" Barbie doll in the likeness of Chinese actress Fan Bingbing.\nHeralding the launch of the doll Mattel declared: \"[Fan Bingbing's] collaboration with Barbie will give purpose and meaning to play and help ignite the spark inside girls across China to 'Shine Your Way'.\"\nSo it's clear that Barbie has learnt that to succeed in China today you have to have a sense of purpose, but then she didn't get the keys to the super-deluxe dreamhouse and the perfect boyfriend Ken by being just a pretty face.", "Toy maker Mattel is partnering with US start-up ToyTalk to develop Hello Barbie, which will have two-way conversations with children.\nThe Barbie will use a speech-recognition platform developed by ToyTalk.\nA prototype of the doll was at the New York Toy Fair on 14 February, where a glut of smart toys were on display.\n\"The number one request we hear from girls around the world is that they want to have a conversation with Barbie. Now, for the first time ever, Barbie can have a two-way conversation,\" said a spokeswoman for Mattel.\nThe Hello Barbie will be able to play interactive games and tell stories and jokes.\nIt will also listen to the child's conversation and adapt to it over time - so, for instance, if a child mentions that they like to dance, the doll may refer to this in a future chat.\nThe doll requires a wi-fi connection and can provide an hour's worth of playtime when fully charged.\nA microphone, speaker and two tricolour LEDs will be embedded in the doll's necklace, while rechargeable batteries in its legs can be connected to an external wall-mounted charger.\nThe doll is expected to sell for about $74.99 (£49). No release date has yet been confirmed.\nIncreasingly, the toy market is becoming saturated with smart versions of old favourites.\nBack in November, the Vivid Toy group released Cayla, a doll that uses speech-recognition and Google's translation tools.\nIn January, security researcher Ken Munro discovered a vulnerability in its software, which allowed for it to be hacked to say things that might not be suitable for children.\nA start-up, now live on Kickstarter, is developing a line of smart toys powered by the IBM-developed supercomputer Watson.\nThe first range from Elemental Path will be a smart dinosaur that can chat with children, tell them jokes and answer a range of questions.\n\"Toys have to keep up with the expectations of children,\" said Natasha Crookes, director of communications for the British Toy and Hobby Association.\n\"As long as children are protected from being able to access anything online, there is no harm in internet-connected toys.\n\"Companies take a lot of care making sure that there are white lists and black lists for content.\"\nSome critics have questioned whether internet-connected toys endanger traditional, imaginative play, but Ms Crookes is not convinced.\n\"Such toys can enhance traditional play,\" she says.\n\"Some of the time, children will play with the toy in internet-connected mode, and some of the time they will play with them in the traditional way, using their imagination,\" she said.", "For many parents the thought of their children's personal data being stolen and made available online is the stuff of nightmares.\nSo what exactly is a smart toy and should you be avoiding them in favour of a more traditional stocking filler this year?\nThe Learning Lodge app store - which provides downloads of apps, games, music and books for toys made by VTech - had its database hacked on 14 November.\nThe personal information stolen, which was not encrypted, included names, email addresses, passwords, secret questions and answers for password retrieval, IP addresses, postal addresses, download histories and children's names, genders and birthdates, according to Vtech.\nIt has also been reported that photos, audio files and chatlogs were stolen - something that the firm has not yet confirmed, although it did say that only unsent messages were stored on its servers.\nThe numbers involved are huge - according to Vtech 6.4 million children's accounts were affected and it has now employed a security firm - Mandiant - to look at the damage and fix it. Until then the app store will remain offline.\nIf a toy is labelled \"smart\" then that probably means it is connected to the internet in some form, whether this be via an app, wi-fi or other method.\nSecurity has not traditionally been an area of expertise for most toymakers so combining tech and toys could lead to problems, thinks security expert Ken Munro.\n\"My view is that the internet of toys is currently the Wild West. Every toy we touch we find security bugs with,\" he said.\nIn January he demonstrated this to the BBC by hacking the software behind Vivid Toy group's conversational doll Cayla, allowing it to say things dolls probably should not say.\nDespite having an office full of connected toys, he will not be handing any of them over to his children.\n\"Instead of paying £60 or £70 for a child-friendly tablet or device I would just buy a second-hand iPhone where you have the confidence that it has been locked down and is secure,\" he told the BBC.\nHello Barbie, another net-connected toy that can share conversations, games and stories with children, has also been subject to some scrutiny from security experts.\nSecurity researcher Matt Jakubowski discovered that conversations with children stored in the cloud can be accessed by others and that the toy can also be used as a surveillance device.\nThe risks of internet-enabled toys don't end with security, thinks activist group Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.\n\"Children confide in dolls and reveal intimate details about their lives, but Hello Barbie won't keep those secrets,\" it said in a statement.\n\"When Barbie's belt buckle is held down, everything your child says is transmitted to cloud servers, where it will be stored and analysed by ToyTalk, Mattel's technology partner.\"\nToyTalk countered that passwords are stored in a hardware-encrypted section of the doll and that no conversation history is stored on the toy. It added that stored data is \"never used for advertising purposes\".\nMore and more toys are getting smart capacities and one of the smartest might be a little dinosaur toy that is powered by IBM's cognitive platform Watson.\nThe brainchild of Elemental Path, the dinosaur doesn't have a name - that is left to the individual child to decide - but it does have elements of artificial intelligence, learning the best ways to interact with the chld.\nSo, for instance, if a child asks it \"How far away is the moon?\", a five-year-old will get a different answer to an eight-year-old.\nBut the toy isn't super-smart, at least not yet. \"Will the dino learn Spanish if my children are Spanish? No,\" said Donald Coolidge, head of business strategy at Elemental Path.\nHe said that the firm is working to make the \"algorithms smarter\".\nThe dinosaur is due for release early next year and the company said that it had put extra effort into security.\n\"It seems that Vtech has not taken some very simple steps that should have been taken,\" said Mr Coolidge, about the recent hack.\nThose days many children live large parts of their lives on the internet so it seems obvious that toymakers would want to tap into that cultural shift.\nAnd many of the toys they make are attempting to bridge the gap between the real world and the digital one.\nSome critics point out that tech toys - like talking dolls and dinosaurs - may limit the imaginative play element that is part of more traditional toys.\nBut Mr Coolidge believes they can enhance it.\n\"One of the reasons we built the dinosaur was because kids ask so many questions and we wanted to build something so that they could continue to ask questions and make up stories.\"", "Starwood said it would terminate a deal to be bought by Marriott International, after it received a superior proposal from a group led by Anbang.\nMarriott and Starwood had agreed to merge in November in a $12bn deal to create the world's largest hotel chain.\nBut the Anbang-led consortium has now outbid Marriott for Starwood.\nMarriott now has five days to decide whether to put in a counter-bid.\nChinese firms have been buying overseas assets, despite their country's slowing economy.\nMainland investors have been snapping up prime US properties and other overseas assets to diversify their holdings amid concerns about weakness in China's economy.\nAnbang bought New York's famous Waldorf-Astoria from Blackstone for a record $1.95bn last year.\nAnd earlier this week, it agreed to buy a US luxury hotel collection from private equity giant Blackstone for a reported $6.5bn (£4.5bn).\nThe Beijing-based company also owns office buildings in New York and Canada and a South Korean insurance company.", "The US company made a net loss of $6.7m ($4.4m) in the first quarter of 2013, compared with a loss of $2.6m a year earlier.\nMuch of the losses came as a result of restructuring charges linked to the $100m per year cost reduction programme.\nHasbro's revenues were up 2% to $664m.\nThe company said that sales of its Monopoly board game were lifted by an online poll urging fans to vote on replacing one of the playing pieces. The clothes iron has subsequently made way for a cat.\nHasbro's other toy brands include Transformers, My Little Pony and GI Joe.", "The affected vehicles include the Quattroporte and Ghibli models made between March 2013 and December 2015, state-owned media said.\nChina's quality watchdog claims a design problem with the floor mat and accelerator could lead to the pedal getting stuck in the working position.\nMaserati will replace the pedals.\nLuxury car brands have seen sales suffer in China in recent years due to the slowing economy and a government crackdown on corruption and overt displays of wealth.\nHowever, firms like Maserati are now looking to online retailing as a new source of growth. China is the world's biggest e-commerce market with nearly 700 million internet users.\nMaserati launched its flagship store on Alibaba's online shopping site Tmall last week, listing 100 of its new SUV Levantes for advance sale.\nThey reportedly sold out in 18 seconds. The car is due to officially launch in China in July.", "The supermarket bought Kiddicare, which is best best-known as an internet retailer, last year for £70m.\nMorrisons will spend £15m converting the outlets and says it will create 700 jobs as part of its plan to give the chain a physical retail presence.\nKiddicare currently only runs one store, which is in Peterborough.\nIt is the largest children's outlet in Europe.\nThe new outlets will offer drive-in services such as children's car seat-fitting.\nKiddicare chief executive Scott Weavers-Wright said: \"These 10 flagship stores will put Kiddicare within easy driving distance of nearly a third of the UK population.\"\nKiddicare's main rival, Mothercare, has been struggling to reverse falling sales.\nThe purchase leaves just one Best Buy store - the one in Derby. The chain was brought to the UK through a joint venture between its US parent and Carphone Warehouse.\nThey were intended to shake up electrical retailing, but were closed this month.\nKiddicare said that although the acquisition would create 700 jobs, it would not be taking on the 1,100 former Best Buy workers, who are understood to have taken other roles within Carphone Warehouse.\nMorrisons plans to start opening the new stores in Merry Hill, Aintree, Rotherham, Nottingham, Thurrock, Hedge End, Croydon, Hayes, Bristol and Enfield by the autumn.", "In a speech in New York, he said his company wanted to help small US businesses sell their wares in China.\nAlibaba already accounts for 80% of all Chinese online consumer shopping and is looking to expand abroad.\nMr Ma said he eventually wanted 40% of sales to come from outside China, rather than the current 2%.\nHe was at pains to explain that Alibaba, which he founded in 1999, differed to Amazon because it didn't buy and sell stock, it provided a platform for small businesses to sell their products.\nAlibaba listed on the New York Stock Exchange last year, raising $25bn, in the largest initial public offering in history.\n\"China has been very focused on exporting,\" Mr Ma said, \"it should focus on importing. China should learn to buy.\"\nQuestioned on how he planned to deal with counterfeits, for which the company has been criticised and is currently being sued by Gucci, he replied he was \"at war against criminals\" and was working closely with the government to stamp it out.\n\"We're getting somewhere,\" he said.\nThe flamboyant Mr Ma, who once dressed up in leather and a Mohican wig and sang Elton John's Can you Feel the Love Tonight? to employees, said he had learned a lot about corporate values and missions in the US - from companies such as GE and Walmart.\nBut the 51-year old could not resist a dig about doing business in the US, mentioning a board meeting in which it was \"like lawyers making a decision. No-one makes the final call\".", "In fact, he's \"so mad\" with a mother in the US, he tweeted: \"I'm burning my Florida mom action figure in protest.\"\nIt's her petition - aimed at the shop Toys R Us - that has got the Breaking Bad actor fuming.\nSusan Schrivjer is calling for the toy retailer to remove all the Breaking Bad character action figures from sale in store and online, because they are a \"dangerous deviation from their family friendly values\".\nShe says the figures, some of which come with \"a detachable sack of cash and a bag of meth\" are not suitable to be sold alongside \"Barbie dolls and Disney characters\".\nIn response to all the press attention her campaign has received, Cranston, who played Walter White in award-winning drama, tweeted his own message of \"protest\".\nSince the petition got notice, Toys R Us appears to have removed the Breaking Bad dolls from sale on their US website.\nThey were priced at $17.99 (£11.10).\nHowever, some of the figures, including a couple of White's sidekick Jesse Pinkman, are still appearing in the \"trending\" and \"recommended for you\" parts of the site.\nIn a statement sent to Newsbeat, Toys R Us said: \"We carry a variety of fictional character action figures, including those for our collector customers.\n\"The products you reference are carried in very limited quantities in the adult action figure area of our stores.\"\nIn a US statement, they also said that the Breaking Bad packaging \"clearly notes that the items are intended for ages 15 and up\".\nSchrivjer, who used the surname Myers to launch her petition online, has received more than 5,000 signatures of support so far.\nFollow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter and Radio1Newsbeat on YouTube", "They closed down 1.8% in Seoul.\nThe country's benchmark Kospi index wrapped the day flat at 2,010.34.\nThe two companies are already entangled in several legal battles over the use of proprietary technology, including fourth-generation (4G) cellular technology, operating systems and user interface software.\nHuawei sued Samsung in the US in May.\nThe rest of Asia's share market are mostly lower on Friday due to a tepid earnings season so far on Wall Street.\nJapan's Nikkei 225 closed 1.1% lower at 16,627.25 points.\nNintendo shares ended the day 0.8% higher after earlier jumping by nearly 5% on news it's finally launched the wildly popular Pokemon Go in Japan.\nAustralian shares finished down 0.3% at 5,498.20.\nHong Kong's Hang Seng wrapped up trading flat at 21,964.27, while the mainland's Shanghai Composite closed 0.9% down at 3,012.43 points.", "The announcement comes after an earlier round of layoffs in May and the resignation of the firm's chief executive.\nEtsy, which became a public company in 2015, has struggled to turn a profit.\nCompetition has also mounted from other firms, including Amazon, which has launched its own handicraft market.\nThe two rounds of layoffs total about 230, or roughly 22% of the firm's workforce at the end of 2016.\nMost of the cuts announced on Wednesday will come at the firm's Brooklyn headquarters, in positions such as marketing, product management and administration.\nFounded in 2005, Etsy employed about 1,000 people globally at the end of 2016 and had about 1.7 million active sellers.\nThe company made $365m in revenue in 2016, but it has posted a loss every year since at least 2012, according to its annual report.\nAt least one of its shareholders has pressured the firm to consider selling itself. Two private equity firms - TPG Group and Dragoneer Investment Group - said last month they had taken a large stake in the company.\nThe firm said the layoffs would lead to as much as $8.8m in charges.", "Chief operations officer Bali Padda will take over in 2017 as the first non-Dane to run the business as it restructures its management.\nJorgen Vig Knudstorp, who has led the family-owned company through a ten year turnaround, will chair the Lego board.\nA new entity, the Lego Brand Group, aims to exploit \"untapped potential\" for the toy cupboard stalwart.\nThe company said the new entity, also chaired by Mr Knudstorp, would \"protect and develop\" the Lego brand, including its educational and charitable activities, and oversee its Legoland attractions.\nMr Padda will focus on the core business whilst the new vehicle, the Lego Brand Group, will consider new avenues for the brand.\n\"It will be exciting,\" he told the BBC. \"It [will be] Lego but as you've never seen before. What does that mean? That is what we have to explore.\"\nLego is still owned by the family of Kirk Kristiansen, who founded the business in 1932. Family members are expected to take an active role within the new Lego Brand Group.\nThe company has constructed sturdy foundations under Mr Knudstorp's leadership. But just over a decade ago the structure was more shaky.\nThe company reached a financial low-point in 2004, as electronic toys swept the market, and the plastic bricks struggled to compete.\n\"It was tough. We were nearly bankrupt at the time.\n\"It was not a good situation to be in, but at the same time it was a fantastic challenge,\" said Mr Padda, who joined Lego from Timberland in 2002.\n\"We were not focused enough,\" he admitted. \"To a degree we had started to leave the brick behind.\"\nMr Padda said Lego had focused on \"instant gratification\", giving children a few ready-made pieces to assemble quickly. The key to the turnaround, he says, was resurrecting the company's \"belief in the brick\".\nThe past decade has seen Lego embrace movie tie-ins including Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Harry Potter, as well as introducing smartphone apps and digital games as well as collaborating on The Lego Movie.\nThe strategy has led to double digit annual growth. In 2015 the company posted revenues of $5.2bn (£4bn), meaning it the world's second-largest toy company after Mattel, the Barbie and Hotwheels maker.\nMr Padda, who spent his childhood in India playing marbles and cricket, and only really encountered Lego through his own children when he was living in the UK, said he would not veer far from the strategy of his predecessor.\n\"I've been an integral part of setting the strategy. That strategy continues.\n\"Where I do wish to focus is how we better prepare ourselves for the future from a leadership capability, capacity point of view,\" he said.\n\"The world is being disrupted in many ways. How do we become a lot more agile to face the challenges that will come to us tomorrow? We don't know what they are, but how do we ensure that we are better prepared?\"", "The deal will see it acquire the 50% stake it does not already hold in 1,300 stores in Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.\nStarbucks already fully owns the other 1,500 outlets in China - its fastest-growing market outside of the US.\nThe coffee giant said the buyout was its biggest ever acquisition.\nThe announcement came as Seattle-based Starbucks announced net income fell 8.3% to $691.6m for the three months to July - only just matching market expectations.\nThe company also announced plans to close all 379 of its Teavana stores by the middle of next year because they had been \"persistently underperforming\".\nStarbucks bought the tea brand for $620m in 2012, and plans to continue carrying the products in its main Starbucks stores.\nStarbucks shares fell 5.5% to $56.24 in after-hours trading.\nChinese dreams\nThe latest results are the first under new chief executive Kevin Johnson, who took over from co-founder Howard Schulz in December.\nMr Johnson described the China buyout as part of the firm's \"long game\" to deal with cooling growth in the US.\nThe world's largest coffee chain is being affected by a reduced footfall in America's malls and high streets, as more consumers turn to shopping online or buying from meal kit sellers and convenience stores.\nSame-store sales in the US rose by 5% last quarter. In China, there was 7% growth.\nStarbucks already has a presence in 130 Chinese cities and hopes to expand its 2,800 stores to more than 5,000 outlets by 2021.\nThere are nearly 600 stores in Shanghai alone, the largest number of any city globally.\nMeanwhile, Starbucks said it was offloading its 50% stake in all 410 outlets in Taiwan, meaning they will be fully owned by its joint venture partners. who pay the US firm license fees.\nThe firm made a similar move with its Hong Kong and Macau operations in 2011.", "He was talking about the retailer's efforts to drive its stores upmarket and \"elevate its retail proposition\".\nThe idea is to give more space over to branded goods and showcase their \"very best products\", even opening gyms in some of the flagship stores.\nAnd on Thursday it announced a \"strategic partnership\" with upmarket Japanese sportswear brand Asics, whose products will be stocked in Asics-managed areas of flagship stores from next year.\nSports Direct described this as \"an important step in Sports Direct's journey to being recognised as the Selfridges of sport.'\"\nWell, there was only one way to find out what this was all about - take a visit to its flagship store on London's Oxford Street, which is showcasing the latest approach.\nAs I walked through the door, to be greeted by thumping music, I dredged through my memory for the last time I'd been in a Sports Direct.\nIt was a long time ago, but my memory was of the slightly claustrophobic feel of fighting through a crowded jumble of kit and equipment, and my perception, right or wrong, that this was an environment aimed primarily at men.\nSo the fact that the Oxford Street store felt light and airy with plenty of space between rails was a welcome relief.\nBut let's be honest, I'm not a typical Sports Direct customer.\nYes, I exercise regularly, but fashion is not foremost in my mind when I'm struggling through another tortuous workout, and I think of Sports Direct as being more about fashion than \"serious\" sport.\nCould I be converted?\nWell, first off, reinforcing my prejudice that this is more of a male environment, the first thing you see as you walk through the door of the Oxford Street store is a display of club strips and a sign proclaiming this is \"The Home of Football\", a reminder that another of Sports Direct's stated aims is to become just that - the home of football.\nAnd most of the customers did seem to be male.\nOf course, a key element of shopping is how the staff treat you.\nWould I be made to feel welcome? As I wandered aimlessly, an assistant did offer to help me, so a big tick there.\nWhat would happen if I tried to buy something. New boxing gloves. Could I get an assistant to advise me?\nYes, as it turned out. A smiley young woman confidently explained the point of the different glove weights.\nOK, once I'd said I would buy them she tried to sell me a special offer on some \"workout make up\" but was quite happy when I said I'd think about it.\nSo how about trying to buy something for my sartorially conservative husband? On the floor below there was no price on the black T-shirt I chose. But another assistant spent a good few minutes checking out the price on the website.\nTicks all round for my experience of the staff I came up against, anyway.\nSo then I waylaid shoppers as they left the store to gauge their reactions.\nRory Bryant, a teacher who used to work in advertising, had come into buy some socks. He had spotted the shift upmarket and was impressed by the lighter feel, \"compared to most Sports Direct stores\".\n\"Most are a jumble of crumpled socks and piles of clothing,\" he says.\nPhotographers' agent James Denton, 49, had been in the Oxford Street store for the first time. He came out with a football for his two-year old son.\nHe said he normally thought of the chain as a slightly downmarket depressing experience. \"so it definitely feels different\".\n\"Stuff is a lot better laid out, they've put a lot of thought into design and layout of everything,\" he added.\nAnother customer, Philip Yardy, described the design of the shops as \"open, appealing\" and encouraging people to walk through.\nBut Stuart Deveson wasn't quite so happy. He spent all of 10 seconds in there, he said. He agreed the entrance to the shop \"looks quite nice\", but said the reason he had walked out so quickly was because he'd gone in to buy shorts and couldn't find them.\n\"If they're not going to make it easy to find what I want, I'll go somewhere else,\" he said.\nSports Direct now has more than 25 new generation stores, of which 12 are \"flagship\" outlets. It plans to open between 16 and 24 new stores in the current financial year, of which about half will be flagship stores.\nSo is Sports Direct \"smashing it out of the park\" with its \"Selfridges of Sport\" concept?\nFinancial analysts seem happy enough with how it's going. Neil Wilson, senior market analyst at ETX Capital, said this had been a \"transformational\" year for Sports Direct.\nProgress was being made on the new premium stores, he said, and they were \"a lot more profitable than the existing Sports Direct stores\".\nInitial impressions from the shoppers I spoke to at least do seem positive.\nPerhaps the last word should go to customer Rory Bryant, who compared the Oxford Street flagship with another retail success story.\nHe said it was now \"more like Niketown up the road\", and perhaps that, as much as Selfridges, is the inspiration behind the chain's makeover.", "Some 1.7 million drawers made from 1999 to 2016 will be recalled over safety concerns, China's regulator said.\nThe decision comes after six children were crushed to death in North America when the chests toppled on them.\nIkea recalled 36 million dressers in the US and Canada last month and has since stopped selling the drawers.\nChina's official Xinhua news agency criticised Ikea last week for showing \"arrogance\" after it initially refused to extend the recall.\n\"The potential danger to household safety from furniture toppling over is a serious problem for the entire homewares industry,\" Ikea said on its website.\n\"Ikea promises to serve as a model in responding to this challenge.\"\nThe US Consumer Product Safety Commission found the Malm drawers can topple over and crush children if not anchored to the wall with screws.\nIkea has warned customers to ensure the drawers are properly fixed to walls and last year launched an awareness campaign.\nHowever, the firm refused to extend the product recall to China, the UK or the EU, saying the products met local industry standards.\nFollowing an online backlash in China over the issue, Ikea offered free home installation and an optional refund.\nChina's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, the safety watchdog, said Ikea had changed its mind after a meeting with them.", "But what happened to the makers of Welsh classics - such as Corgi Cars and Superted - which once were part of the engine room of Britain's toy trade?\nThe British Toy and Hobby Association (BTHA) has said the re-launch of many old favourites will boost sales after the UK's highest growth in half a decade, last year.\nHowever, that comes too late for the bulk of Wales' toy industry, which once employed thousands but has now \"almost disappeared\", according to experts.\n\"It's amazing how evocative a toy can be,\" said Hilary Kennelly, of the West Wales Museum of Childhood.\n\"It can transport you back to a childhood that you had even half-forgotten. Yes, toys are quite powerful.\"\nBut that wistful sense of a wonderful time, now irretrievably lost, applies equally to the once-vigorous sector of factories and studios which turned out play things across Wales.\nMrs Kennelly and her husband, Paul, preside over a staggering collection of 10,000 toys at the museum in Llangeler, Carmarthenshire - many of them Welsh-made.\nDescribing the rise of their creators, she said: \"There were so many toys needed that a lot of British firms and the occasional American firm came to Wales.\n\"And, of course, there was government help to set up factories.\n\"Especially when you had the men doing coal mining and the steel-making, you wanted something for the wives to be doing. So, a lot of toy making was actually the wives, because they had more nimble fingers.\"\nThis red Rover Sterling could be the rarest Corgi car ever to have left the firm's Swansea plant, according to Paul Kennelly of the West Wales Museum of Childhood.\nHe said only 12 are known to have been made, with the details of their production tantalisingly vague.\nHe bought them from a wholesaler who had picked them up at the Fforestfach plant as it was closing in 1991.\nThe Rover Sterling was only available in silk green, silver and an assortment of police designs, and he believes the dozen red prototypes were intended, not as production models, but as colour trials.\nWith so few of the model in existence, it has previously fetched up to £200.\nThe bulk of toy production had traditionally taken place in Germany until World War One.\n\"All of sudden, you couldn't be playing with 'enemy' toys,\" Mrs Kennelly added, explaining that caused producers to spring up in Britain.\nWorld War Two then led to the expulsion of many Jewish manufacturers from Germany, including Mettoy, which later became Corgi Cars.\nMettoy set up in Northampton before running a subsidised plant at Fforestfach, Swansea, making, not toys, but necessities for the war effort, including jerrycans and Bren Gun clips.\nBut 1956 saw the release of Corgi's first toy vehicle - a Ford Consul (200/200M) - with the range going on to rapidly expand and the factory going on to employ more than 5,000 people.\nCorgi, which overshadowed any other producer in Wales, sold its miniatures all over the world, with film and TV replicas, such as the Batmobile and James Bond's Aston Martin DB5 among the most coveted.\nHowever, it was sold to American giant Mattel in 1989 and the factory in Swansea was closed in 1991. After a management buyout in 1995, Corgi was then acquired by Kent-based Hornby in 2008.\n\"It was a very sad day when Corgi left Wales,\" Mrs Kennelly said.\nBut at its peak, the Welsh toy-making industry was home to other large manufacturers.\nTri-ang Toys, in Merthyr Tydfil, made railways and wooden toys; Wells' Toys had a factory in Holyhead, Anglesey, and Wendy Boston Teddy Bears had premises in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire and Crickhowell, Powys.\nIn the 1940s the late Arthur Schneider was responsible for bringing Crescent Toys - which made cowboy guns, models and cars - from London to Cwmcarn, in Caerphilly county.\nJohn Aldridge worked at the plant for about 25 years and was chief designer when it closed in 1981.\nHis widow, Jean, 76, of Cross Key, Caerphilly, said it was \"a big factory to lose\" for the area.\nSuperTed, the animated bear who became the first star of Welsh channel S4C and later a British staple, also spawned a successful range of soft collectables.\nHowever, Mrs Kennelly said the Welsh toy-making industry has now \"almost disappeared\", adding: \"There are very few firms still making things here.\"\nAmong them is The Rocking Sheep Company, in Harlech, Gwynedd, has produced a hand-made \"woolly alternative\" to the traditional rocking horse since 1991.\nSimon Wolfers, who runs the small firm, said: \"It's getting more and more difficult. You have to diversify to survive.\n\"I have always wanted to grow to a point, but I have never gotten to that stage. There has been recession after recession. It's been a battle.\"\nBut despite many Welsh producers passing into the night, thousands of collectors continue to trawl the internet for the lacuna in their cherished horde.\nA search for Corgi cars alone on online auction site eBay yields more than 4,500 results.\nSo, why does their popularity endure, even if their creators do not?\nMrs Kennelly has a theory: \"A childhood memory is a nice thing every so often.\"", "The business in China delivers more than half of overall profit, but has suffered hurdles, including food safety worries.\nThis month, the US firm cut its profit outlook, citing a slower-than-expected comeback in China.\nThe move means any setbacks in China will have less impact on the US stock.\nYum had come under mounting pressure from investors to split the units.\nThe announcement came just days after the firm had named activist investor Keith Meister to its board.\nMr Meister is the founder and managing partner of hedge fund Corvex Management which has a stake in Yum and had suggested the plans to split off the China unit.\nThe firm said the spin-off will be complete by 2016.\nYum Brands has suffered repeated setback in its China business. The firm blamed a stronger US currency against the yuan for its poor results. But it is also still recovering from a food scandal last year.\nRevenue at the KFC restaurants in China suffered in July last year after a television report linked the brand to supplier Shanghai Husi Food, which was accused of selling meat that was out of date.\nSince then, the firm has been trying to win back customers. In the latest quarter, Yum Brands reported that sales in China rose just 2%.\nBut the company is also suffering from the slowing overall economic growth in the country, as well as growing competition from local food companies.\nYet the company on Tuesday said it believes the China unit could grow from its current 6,900 restaurants to more than 20,000 restaurants in the future.\nThe China business, which will be headquartered in Shanghai, had brought in $6.9bn (£4.8bn) in revenue last year.\nAt its 1987 debut near Beijing's Tiananmen Square, Yum's KFC was a novelty with a menu that included porridge and other local favourites.\nThe company said that the remaining Yum Brands business outside of China will concentrate on becoming more of a franchisor, with the goal of having at least 95% of its restaurants owned and operated by franchisees by the end of 2017.\nYum China will be Yum Brands' biggest franchisee and will operate under a franchise agreement.\nYum Brands currently has more than 41,000 restaurants worldwide.", "The retailer has announced it will be removing the dolls from their shelves.\nA mother from Florida launched an online petition for their sale to be stopped by the chain, as the dolls were a \"dangerous deviation from their family friendly values\".\nIn a statement Toys R Us said: \"Let's just say, the action figures have taken an indefinite sabbatical.\"\nThe four collectible dolls, based on characters from the AMC drama, and carried accessories including a detachable bag of money and a bag of methamphetamines.\nToys R Us had said that the figures were sold in limited quantities in the adult-action-figure area of its shops and had already removed them from sale in their online store.\n\"While the show may be compelling viewing for adults, its violent content and celebration of the drug trade make this collection unsuitable to be sold alongside Barbie dolls and Disney characters,\" said campaigner Susan Schrivjer.\nHer petition has now gathered more than 9,000 signatures.\nAnother campaign has been launched in response by Daniel Pickett, of Manhattan Beach, California, who wants Toys R Us to keep the dolls on sale. It has more than 3,000 signatures.\n\"I'm a parent of a school aged child myself, but I'm an informed, responsible parent and I closely monitor the toys, TV, music, movies and games that my daughter sees, he said.\n\"That's my job, and I take it seriously. But I also like toys/action figures and I want 3D representations of characters from my favourite properties and I love being able to walk into a store and find them.\"\nBreaking Bad follows the story of Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher, played by Bryan Cranston, who becomes a crystal meth dealer.\nEarlier this week Cranston tweeted in response to the petition.\n\"'Florida mom petitions against Toys 'R Us over Breaking Bad action figures.' I'm so mad, I'm burning my Florida Mom action figure in protest,\" he wrote.\nFollow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter and Radio1Newsbeat on YouTube", "Reports suggest Chinese buyers are acquiring the clothing retailer, which started in London in the 1850s.\nIts illustrious fans have included the Queen Mother, Margaret Thatcher and actors such as Cary Grant.\nBut after the British firm was saved from administration in 2012, it has mainly focused on China and last year saw its UK sales fall 16%.\nHong Kong-based YGM Trading, which bought it for £15m four years ago, said Aquascutum is due to be sold in March 2017 to two buyers.\nThe unnamed acquirers have made a $5m down payment for exclusive rights to the deal, YGM said in its annual report this week.\nChinese textile firm Shandong Ruyi Group is understood to be one of the buyers, according to Bloomberg.\nAquascutum started as a Mayfair tailors in 1851, rising to prominence after its founder, John Emary, patented the first waterproof textile.\nIts trench coats were worn by British soldiers during the First World War, while in 1953 its wyncol fabric - designed to withstand 100 mph winds - was used by explorer Edmund Hillary in the first confirmed ascent of Mount Everest.\nThe coats were also a regular feature on the silver screen, with Sean Connery wearing one in Another Time, Another Place in 1958 and Sophia Loren in The Key.\nHowever, the retailer has struggled in recent years, closing its Nottinghamshire factory in 2012 and then falling into administration.\nUnder YGM's ownership, the company's primary focus has been China, with 135 of its 146 outlets located in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.\nLast year it closed 14 stores in China amid declining sales, but opened one in Europe.\nIn the UK, its three remaining standalone stores are in Westfield London, Great Marlborough Street and Jermyn Street.", "China is increasingly important for the firm's movie and merchandise sales.\nAnd it says Disneyland Shanghai - its first theme park in mainland China - was one of its \"biggest success stories in 2016.\"\nBut there are fears protectionist policies being pursued by US President Donald Trump could set off a trade war between the two countries.\nDuring his election campaign, Mr Trump threatened to impose a 45% tariff on Chinese imports, to try and tackle what he sees as an increasingly unbalanced economic relationship between the nations.\n\"An all-out trade war with China would be damaging to Disney's business and to business in general,\" Disney's chief executive Bob Iger told CNBC.\nHe was also critical of an executive order signed by Mr Trump barring migrants and refugees from several Muslim countries.\n\"We cannot shut our borders to immigrants,\" he said.\nThe comments came as Disney reported overall sales unexpectedly falling to $14.8bn (£11.8bn) in the three months to the end of December, which is 3% lower than the same period a year ago.\nIt blamed a drop in advertising earnings at its cable network ESPN and a 7% fall in revenues at its movie business.\nDisney's shares initially dropped 2% in after hours trading.\nSince it opened its gates last June, Disneyland Shanghai has received more than 7 million visitors.\nThe firm reported tickets had been sold out over most of the Lunar New Year holiday period which began ten days ago." ]

[ "Sometimes work feels like a drag. You get caught up in trying to be more productive and suddenly your life turns into a series of to-do lists ." ]

[ "Believe it or not, it is possible to enjoy that juicy hamburger or cheeseburger without looking like a complete slob. Savoring it without making a mess while eating with the effortless suavity of seasoned veteran is your task.", "This article is about looking gorgeous with minimal make-up on! This look gives you an effortless,natural look that will make you feel more confident about yourself.", "AMV stands for Anime Music Video. It is basically a slideshow of images, fanart, or clips from an anime, set to a particular song. Making an AMV might seem easy and effortless and a waste of time at first, but it takes practice, skill, and patience to make a good AMV.", "Although professionals onstage or in your favorite movies might make acting seem effortless, their performances are generally the result of years of effort, intelligent research, and careful observation.", "Would you like a happier life at work? Staying positive at work makes you happier, ups your productivity, and allows you to feel proud of your accomplishments.", "If you want to be a guitar god, you need to have a properly tuned guitar. While there are digital tuners to make the job effortless, a practiced musician can tune their instrument in other ways.", " I recently watched Drive Angry and noticed the great style of Amber Heard in it. Her style is quite relaxed and effortless. ", "Psoriasis can be a difficult condition to deal with at the best of times. Your skin may feel itchy or make you feel embarrassed, and psoriatic arthritis can cause pain and fatigue at work.", " You want that guy that's a couple years older? Leaving school soon, but you feel you can still make it work? Read on! ", "Boho-inspired weddings are a great option for those who want something unconventional and natural for their big day. Opt for wedding attire that is simple and effortless.", "It can be difficult to make important decisions or work on significant projects when you're not feeling your best. Pregnancy can affect your work and life balance, as some women experience fatigue, nausea and hormonal changes.", "Colombian pop star Shakira is known for her effortless belly dancing in music videos and live performances. She takes traditional belly dancing moves and adds her own flare, making the moves that much more entertaining and sexy.", "Stubble refers to facial hair growth that can’t quite be classified as a beard yet. It may look effortless, but maintaining it takes more than simply not shaving.", "Those big, happy creatures called manatees that you read about in books or see on television can be practically effortless to draw if you use the right technique.", "Belle from Beauty and the Beast is a true natural beauty. Belle's style is very simple and effortless. Her sensible but fashionable style is always \"in\" and always will be.", "This is a delicious chewy sticky syrupy festive cake which your guests will love. Or if you want to make it for your family, or yourself- indulge! Maybe Santa would love some too... This is easy and simple and requires only a few utensils, so it's an effortless clean up.", "A lot of people are attracted to beach hair. It's beautiful and natural. Beach hair is sun-kissed hair with a lot of texture and messy waves. It look effortless and attractive.", "Suffering from illness including the flu and colds or diarrhea can make it difficult to get through any day. No matter if you have to go to work or school, or even just stay home, you may feel miserable and not know how to make yourself feel better.", "Working while pregnant presents a lot of challenges. You may feel sick or tired. This can make it extra hard just to make it out the door! Taking proper care of yourself and communicating effectively with your employer will make your days easier as you work during pregnancy.", "Wavy hair is a trendy, relaxed, effortless style that even people with the straightest or curliest of hair can achieve. Try to get curly hair with braids, twists, and coiled buns.", "You may struggle to keep your foundation looking effortless and natural throughout the day, especially when it has a tendency to turn a sudden shade of orange.", "A full social schedule or work week can make you feel like flaking out on plans. Sometimes you just aren’t feeling up for a scheduled activity. Getting out of something requires either confrontation or little white lies.", "Most of us have seen someone do an overhand volleyball serve that looked effortless. While an overhand volleyball serve is a more versatile serve, it's also more difficult.", "So you want to dress like a fashionable Parisian? Parisian chic is elegant and effortless, and much classier than the standard American getup of Uggs and a North Face.", " Work clothing that is both fashionable and professional helps to ensure that you feel confident, comfortable and well presented at work. ", "Changing a disposable diaper isn't a natural process every parent is born to understand. Fortunately it's relatively quick, effortless, and allows for some quality time with your child.", "Psychosomatic illness is when somebody is so worked up about something, they start to make themselves feel sick. It can be related to a disability such as anxiety, OCD, ADHD, or autism.", "Verbal bullies are all around us. They might be in our family, in our social group, or at work or school. These people usually make themselves feel better by belittling others.", "In high school, there always seems to be the flawless girl who is smart, pretty and good at everything. Whether it sports, in class or her social circle, everything seems effortless and wonderful.", "Bass guitar is the harmonic backbone of a musical group or ensemble. Good bass players are invaluable musicians, effortless bridging the drums and guitars to form a grooving, danceable, and melodic beat.", "Ever wanted to wear stylish clothes, but feel totally clueless about how? Fashion is about wearing clothes that make you feel good. No matter what your style type, you can wear stylish clothes for both work and play.", "Changing the world is a noble goal, but sometimes it can be hard to feel like you are making an impact as an individual. You might not notice the impact of your efforts overnight, but you can make a difference with persistence and hard work." ]

[ "Most kids in the UK grow up with Ribena, a delicious sweet blackcurrant drink that you dilute with water. Thirst-quenching with a wonderful flavor & packed with lots of Vitamin C. I still love it & I'm in my 40s living thousands of miles away from a UK supermarket. Fortunately Ribena is available online :) I highly recommend Ribena!" ]

[ "When I saw Ribena on Amazon I knew that the internet now has everything.<br /><br />Ribena is a concentrate, you must mix it with water before drinking it. I guess this saves on shipping and space since instead of buying 600ml, you're buying 5400ml (since they ask you to mix it with 8 parts water.) This type of packaging seems to have fallen out of favor since it isn't that popular anymore.<br /><br />What it is: It's a blackcurrant drink. Blackcurrant seems to be a berry particular to the British since no other nation sells this type of drink that I know of. On researching it, I found that it became popular in Britain during WW2 because there were few other sources of vitamin C available to British children during the war and this berry was suitable for growing in the UK climate.<br /><br />It's hard to describe the taste of blackcurrant to anyone who hasn't tasted it, only that it's a little like grape juice but without any tartness or aftertaste and quite sweet. I can't really compare it with anything else since it just simply taste better than any time of grape or berry juice that I've ever had. I can only say that it's great tasting and you must try it. On top of this flavorful goodness, blackcurrants are also rich in vitamins and anti-oxidants; it's almost like hamburgers which are good for you, or cigarettes which prolong your life, something too good to be true! You can drink it cooled in the fridge or hot with hot water and it tastes good both ways!<br /><br />When I was a kid I used to drink shots of it in a shot glass mixed with only 2-3 parts of water, ahh the memories... and the abuse my pancreas must have taken... As I see from other reviews, most Americans who love this love it for nostalgia's sake having had it as a child overseas. Well, it really is as good as nostalgia and I'm glad I can find it through Amazon today.", "I was so excited to see Ribena on Amazon and ordered the pack of 6, but upon opening the first bottle and pouring some out to dilute it, I could see that it was weak and more watery than it should be. Although this is made in Britain, I have a feeling they dilute it to ship to the US. Cadbury's and Nestle's do the same thing with their chocolate...we get the waxy stuff over here, meanwhile the UK gets the creamy, good stuff! Unless it was a fluke, my 6 bottles were much weaker than normal. I won't order this again-I only gave it 4 stars because real Ribena is excellent and this does have the flavor.", "The product arrived in USPS Priority Mail in good condition. The product is fresh, as I've had concentrate that was sitting in a store shelf for a long time and the syrup has turned brown instead of the reddish hue. Just in case you're wondering, this product was available locally in San Francisco Asian grocery stores and some Safeway supermarkets that have Asian cooking sections. But I think the local distributor no longer stocks them as I cannot find them anywhere local for the last 2 years.<br /><br />The 600ml bottle is the smaller size of the two available sizes. The one that I am used to the the 1000ml (1 liter) bottle which is slightly larger and is more common as the American size. These turned out to be a smaller than I expected.<br /><br />The internal pull top opening is no longer circular but star shaped, allowing for a better flow stream without gurgling. I mix this at a very diluted ratio of 10:1 of water:concentrate.<br /><br />I also recommend the IKEA ligonberry concentrate which comes in a 300ml glass bottle for $5 at the IKEA store. It tastes close (a bit sweeter) but is of course a different fruit. I'm glad I was able to find Ribena from Amazon as I have been craving this a long time now. I still prefer the original blackcurrent flavor to the new lemon-blackcurrent or other fruit mix flavor blackcurrent concentrate. I've grown up drinking the original Ribena and the new flavors don't appeal to me as much.", "When I lived in England I used to buy this brand of Blackcurrant juice and enjoyed it very much. I have tried other brands, which were ok, but this was the one I liked best. I came back to North America and have had a hard time finding ANY black currant juice, let alone Ribena brand. This juice is a good value too because it is concentrated, so you only use a little to mix with whatever you are drinking - water, cider, etc - or cooking with it. Value from this shop is great, actually a little less expensive than the other store I found it at in Canada. I was pleased with the shipping too, it was fast and well packaged.", "For those that have never tried blackcurrant drink, or wonder at it's high price (it is far cheaper in the UK). It's all about quality, taste. It is a thick syrup like fluid when poured and it's taste is pure - not artifical.<br />My favourite drink of all time, is some ribena (just the amount you would use if diluting it with water), and fill glass with ginger beer (cock,n bull is great) not ginger ale. Try it!", "Our local Fresh and Easy market is a british company and they have a lot of imported British items. I enjoy trying them. One of the latest is a bottle of Ribena Blackcurrent Concentrate. I thought it was just an expensive juice when I first bought it, but it was a concentrate to mix with water and that makes it much less expensive. I usually mix it with a slightly carbonated spring water that I keep ice cold in the fridge. Mmmmm. Good. Excellent, as a matter of fact and it's not very high in calories. I might add that my bottle is 600 ml and the bottle listed here is a liter, but otherwise it's the same exact product.<br /><br />Gary Peterson", "This drink is great chilled or warm. My kids love it, sure I will reorder.", "We have tried the Kiwi Berry and did like it. The Black Cherry was an even bigger hit. I may even consider purchasing a bulk pack of these and stocking the kids refrigerator. I would rather them drink more of these than sodas. I would most prefer they drink more water and eat more fresh fruits!", "The mojito is one of The Wiofe's favorite drinks and the kids got a kick out of the Appletini moctail, so we gave this one a shot too. I think there's a noticeable medicine taste, as with most sugar-free drinks, but they love them.", "Oh's has been my favorite cereal as a kid and still is an essential staple of my college diet. It's absolutely f'ing delicious.", "I've been familiar with bottled Ribena for more than half a century and no matter what type of bottle it comes in, it remains as it always was. I have not tried the alternative flavors, nor have I ever bought Ribena in cartons. So my review is limited to the original blackcurrant drink and while my own taste has changed over the years, Ribena has never changed the original drink despite experimenting with alternatives.<br /><br />The blackcurrant is a fruit native to Britain and some other European countries, but its most important quality as a food is that it is rich in Vitamin C. It was once popular in America prior to being banned there early in the 20th century because blackcurrants were seen as a threat to the logging industry. The decision to continue the ban was eventually delegated to state level and some states now permit blackcurrants to be grown. Nevertheless, blackcurrants may struggle to regain their former American popularity.<br /><br />Meanwhile in Britain, Ribena was launched in 1936. Blackcurrants became popular in World War II because so many other fruits became hard to obtain and the government encouraged blackcurrant production by providing free blackcurrant drinks (actually Ribena without the brand name) to children, to give them that all-important Vitamin C. With peace restored, the Ribena brand went from strength to strength in its home market. As a post-war baby boomer, I was inevitably introduced to Ribena and it was my favorite drink as a child. My tastes changed and I grew out of it, but never forgot its medicinal value.<br /><br />As an adult, I have as far as possible avoided medicines and pills of any kind. I believe in letting my body learn to cope with the nasty stuff that comes along, at least for a while. When I feel the time is right to help nature cure me of my ills, I buy a bottle of Ribena. Whether it's because of the Vitamin C or because of the other blackcurrant nutrients I wouldn't know, but Ribena has helped me get over many a bad illness.<br /><br />There will be those who drink Ribena for the pure pleasure of it, as I did back in the fifties and sixties. As such, it can be drunk hot or cold, remembering that it is concentrated and needs plenty of added water. Medicinally, I always drink it hot. Those who follow my reviews may have wondered why I suddenly stopped just as I was getting into reviewing again after a long hiatus. Yes, I had a particularly nasty cold/flu/whatever and Ribena is aiding my recovery, which is by no means complete as I write this. Hey, Ribena is not a magic potion, merely a drink.", "We put this in our water and it gives the water a sweet lemon flavor. It makes water interesting. Works great for getting the kids to drink more water.", "I was SO happy when I was able to buy this drink on Amazon. No store or club around me carries it, and I don't like the idea of paying over $1.30 for ONE at the school. Kids love them!!!", "Perfect ginger beer with the right amount of spiceness (not too much). Very much up market from a UK general ginger beer (asda. tesco own make). More depth and more 'fire' than that so if you like really bland drinks, this isn't for you. It has enough of a kick to it to be interesting. Best ginger beer I have tasted.<br />Try it with a small amount of ribena (blackcurrant cordial) or be more safe and stick with the UK lime cordial, but either makes for a great alternative to alcohol - don't even miss alcohol with a 'ginger beer and blackcurrant', try it - you won't be disappointed.<br />But it does have a good recipe for an alcohol drink on the back!", "This water is great. It is getting my kids to drink water (whereas before they would only drink chocolate milk and juice!). In addition, unlike other brands you can unscrew the tops and refill them! They are great for my toddler too and if it does spill, just water!LOVE THESE!", "One thing I'm proud of myself about is that I've managed to keep my kids away from sugar and HFCS laden beverages. We tried Hint Fizz and became total devotees. Peach is our favorite, but they really are all excellent. I finally decided to have it delivered because it became tedious lugging case after case from the store and occasionally finding they'd run out.<br /><br />Goes to prove that if you offer kids a better alternative, they might just learn to prefer it over the bad stuff.", "I bought this thinking, ok, if the kids dont drink this I will, at least they'll be getting their vitamin A along with more vitamin C than I've seen in any other juice drink. Not even getting into the other health benefits of vegetable and fruit juice. So I hand it to them, they suck it down like it was made of pure chocolate gold, and ask for more in their lunch boxes the next day. I'm happy.", "This product is as close as youre going to get to chopping a coconut off a tree and cutting it open. I got hooked on coconut water in costa rica and now I drink it all the time. And I feel great! This is a perfct alternative to pedialyte for children and very good to keep you dehydrated especially you have have diharrea. The passion fruit flavor adds subtle sweetness abd a nice tropical flavor.", "We eat healthy. That means my kids drink very little juice and zero soda. By very little I mean I never buy it, they might have some at a friend's house or a party or something. Generally they drink only milk or water. But that means they feel left out when the other kids have sugar-filled juice boxes or caprisuns. Enter Honest Kids! Yes, they have sugar in them, that's what I like. Go look at a box of 'Roaring waters' - that has artificial sweeteners (and sugar too, something I never could quite figure out). I would rather my children had a small amount of real sugar than artificial sweeteners. Since they are used to drinking only water otherwise, they like these, they don't complain they taste watered down. In fact if you compare these to a typical CapriSun, its kind of like the difference between a Vitamin Water and Gatorade. When you are used to Vitamin water, (original) Gatorade is going to taste sickly sweet, if you are used to Gatorade, Vitamin water is going to taste like water with slight flavor. Ask yourself which you want your children to be used to?<br /><br />I've seen other reviewers complain that they are hard to open or messy - my 6 and 8 year olds have no problems with them. They put the straw in themselves and don't have a problem spilling them.<br /><br />Now they don't feel left out when everyone else has a juice box, and I feel good about the amount of sugar they are taking in. At only 40 calories and no artificial sweeteners, this is exactly what I've been looking for!", "This product truly exceeded my expectations. I entertained at our home recently and served a cocktail made with Tanqueray (about 1.5 ounces),a bottle of this, and the juice of half a lime for each drink. It was really, really good, especially on a hot day. ( The drink is essentially a gin rickey with bitter lemon instead of soda water.) If you like gin with citrus, you will love this drink. Again, this is a great product.", "I love having something to get some Vitamin C into my kids during cold season especially. This contains not only Vitamin C, but also a bunch of B vitamins, and caffeine. I'm not excited about giving my kids caffeine, but early enough in the day I can certainly make that work.<br /><br />The taste? It got two thumbs up from everyone, basically tasting like any other \"fruit punch\" beverage out there.<br /><br />It was super-easy to make -- just squeeze (one squeeze for 8 oz of water) and the force of the liquid coming out pretty well mixed the beverage. No additional stirring was necessary.<br /><br />Once the bottle has been opened, it needs to be stored in the fridge and should be used within 30 days. With 5 kids, I know I won't have a problem using it.<br /><br />The kids voted that I should purchase more, and maybe try some other flavors.", "Red Bull essentially revolutionized the energy drink industry and the company does not mess with a good thing; the formula has not changed and it is a solid product. I use Red Bull during the day and have found it as an excellent drink for recovery from my longer swims (I am in the pool three hours for a nonstop freestyle workout). No bull, it is near the top in the field of energy drinks that gets more crowded seemingly each week.", "I was recommended to Amazon to get my Celtic Sea Salt by a friend online. Great price. Also...celtic sea salt has the highest essential minerals of any salt out there...so I drink 1 to 2 tsps of the salt in water everyday. Not the same as our bleached out salt in the grocery stores. This one is actually very good for you.", "These are great treats that I wish Amazon.com carried as part of its regular stock. These are essentially wax bottles of flavored sweets in them that vanish quickly when you're doing mindless work. Just bite off bits and chew them until the liquid is gone, then spit out the wax. They taste great and nice treats for kids as well. Summer candy they ain't, and the wax can melt unless shipped with an ice pack. The downside is the shipping price.", "My kids have been drinking this milk for years. My older son is essentially a vegetarian, and we have relied on this milk for a big percentage of his daily protein and calcium. He is also a very picky eater, so he noticed immediately the change to low-fat. I know, it has less sugar, but that's a deal-breaker for him. We're willing to let him have that extra sugar, if that's the price we have to pay for him to get his protein. Needless to say, we will be looking for a different brand.<br />BTW, I know I'm not alone. I started buying this milk on Amazon because it would sell out at all the stores in the city I live. Now there's a glut of the new low-fat milk at all the stores.", "I originally purchased this for my kids but they wouldn't drink it. They don't know what they're missing because this stuff is great. I always add a scoop to my veggie shakes (spinach, kale, orange, blueberries, and coconut water). It gives them a nice chocolate flavor without being too sweet.", "this is so unbelievably horrible!<br /><br />what it claims, the packaging, the wording, etc... anyone who makes a child drink this should be arrested for child abuse.<br />i know, kind of extreme... just trying to make a point. I almost bought this because the price, sounds like a good deal.<br /><br />I decided to find out whats in it first. sounds fairly easy, but noooooo. good luck finding the ingredients. kraft website??? nope! here on amazon??? nope! simply web search??? nope!<br />I found it on kmart of all sites. they listed the ingredients, thanks kmart.<br /><br />#1 Water<br />#2 High Fructose Corn Syrup<br />#3 Citric Acid<br />#4 Sucrolose (aka splenda) which is made by taking sugar grown naturally, slicing out part of its dna, and adding in a molecule from bleach. think GMO, and tastes like crap to boot.<br />#5 something called \"Natural Flavor\". check it out from the FDA:<br />under the Code of Federal Regulations is: \"the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional\" (21CFR101.22)<br /><br />So basically we have no idea what that is. but clearly it offers zero nutritional value<br /><br />So thank you Kraft and Capri sun for trying to sell me poisonous sugar water masked as health food for my children!", "My kids love this milk. Admit it is on the expensive side, but it travels well and the kids will drink it (they won't drink other milk.)<br />Note: Just went to BJs wholesale and paid 12.99 for the 18 pk. Won't buy from Amazon again when there's such a price difference.", "Cafe Bustelo Cool is the yummiest drink ever! Also can be a motivating tool to get teens to do their chores by promising to give them one. Will definitely be buying this product again!", "My kids will drink carnation instant breakfast anytime. They like strawberry the best. Which is hard to find in stores, so I have to order it by the case online. Good for food storage and since it's made from powdered milk, it mixes well with it too.", "I tried this, just one can, and am glad I had not bought more. I do admire the company for coming up with an alternative to typical soft drinks but it's not for me. I'd describe it as a sickeningly sweet syrup with very little carbonation added. Plenty of carbonation is essential to a soft drink, it makes it sparkly and refreshing, plus it counteracts the sweetness. As I said I'm glad it was just one can, my only regret is that I wasted 1.5 ounces of perfectly good vodka trying to make it more palatable and it didn't.", "I have a very, very, very, very, very hyper 4-yr old. He is particularly sensitive to artificial colors. Many of the \"kid\" drinks on the market are filled with hideously vibrant artificial colors. I needed an alternative for him. The flavor isn't quite the same and the sweetness of this drink isn't the same type of sugary sweetness you find in the typical kid punch type drinks, but that's actually a good thing. This tastes more like real cherry. My son loves this drink mix. I use it at less than half strength so the jar lasts even longer. The fact that it doesn't have sugar or artificial sweeteners is a plus. My son doesn't get that sugar high. I also love to add this to water (although my favorite flavor is the strawberry while his is the cherry). This is definitely as good for adults as it is for the kids." ]

[ "From a recently released CD, the ensemble Europa Galante (oo-ROH-pah gah-LAHN-tay), conducted by Fabio Biondi (FAH-bee-oh bee-OHN-dee), performs the first movement from the Concerto No. 1 in D major by Arcangelo Corelli. (Opus 111 OPS 30-147)" ]

[ "Federal law prohibits ex-convicts from associating with other ex-convicts when released on parole, unless that person is a spouse. Recently, a gay couple, both released from prison on parole, successfully challenged those limits in Pennsylvania. Daniel Mangini, Steven Roberts and their lawyer, Larry Frankel, discuss the impact of their case.", "In a segment from January of last year — around the time they released their successful debut, We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic — Foxygen's Jonathan Rado and Sam France turn up on World Cafe to perform and discuss songs from their album together. More recently, Foxygen has dropped hints about a forthcoming double album, as well as the possibility of five upcoming releases that would each center on a different era from the past. But in the meantime, now is as good a time as any to revisit the songs that made the band famous in the first place.", "Kevin Drew is best known for co-founding the groundbreaking Canadian indie-pop supergroup Broken Social Scene in 1999. Around the same time, he founded Arts & Crafts, a record label for that band's releases. Now, 15 years later, it has become one of Canada's most important labels, releasing albums by Feist, Deer Tick and more. In March, Drew released his second solo album, Darlings. Its songs thoughtfully and pointedly address the complex meanings of intimacy and love. He and his band recently joined World Cafe in the studio to perform three songs from the record. Visit the World Cafe Tumblr for a link to a free download from this session.", "Elvis Perkins had just released his debut CD, Ash Wednesday, at the time of this Mountain Stage recording from April 2007. He's gained more critical and commercial success since then, having recently released his second full-length CD, Elvis Perkins in Dearland. An early version of the new album's \"Doomsday,\" described by Perkins as a \"northern hoedown,\" is previewed here, along with three tracks from Ash Wednesday. With an intimate voice and intricate melodic style, Perkins crafts deft, tuneful numbers that are at times deceptively upbeat. Perkins is joined by his longtime cohorts Wynham Boylen-Garnet on guitar, harmonium and trombone; Nick Kinsey on drums and harmonica; and Brigham Brough on bass. He recently contributed a track to an all-star tribute to Mark Mulcahy, leader of the '80s alt-rock band Miracle Legion, called Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs of Mark Mulcahy. This is a repeat performance of Mountain Stage.", "Mexican immigration to the United States has dropped sharply in recent years, according to a recently released study from the Pew Hispanic Center. Robert Siegel talks with Rafael Fernandez de Castro, a political analyst in Mexico City who specializes in U.S.-Mexico relations, about the reasons behind the drop off.", "For their first appearance on Mountain Stage, California rockers Delta Spirit performs songs from its latest releases, History From Below, and the recent The Waits Room EP. The latter was recorded in the fabled converted closet at Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati, Calif., where Tom Waits crafted his sound. The band toured heavily, playing almost 300 shows, in support of its 2008 break-out release, Ode to Sunshine. They convened almost immediately to begin recording what would become the follow-up, History From Below. Filled with ringing guitar and bright harmony, the band performs some highlights from each release, including more stripped-down songs from The Waits Room EP, which includes a re-imagined acoustic version of \"Bushwick Blues.\" This segment originally aired on January 11, 2011.", "Lucinda Williams first performed on Mountain Stage in 1989, a full 10 years after releasing her debut Ramblin'. Heard here in her fifth appearance, she brings songs from her highly anticipated latest release Blessed. Williams first industry recognition came in 1993 as the writer of \"Passionate Kisses,\" which won a Grammy for \"Country Song of the Year,\" recorded by Mary Chapin Carpenter. In 1998, she broke through as a recording artist with Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, an album that netted her another Grammy and is widely hailed as a high-water mark in the broadly defined genre of Americana music. Williams has released five studio albums since then, the most recent being Blessed. Armed only with an acoustic guitar, she plays four songs from that new release, as well as \"Everything Has Changed\" from the album West, and the title track from World Without Tears. She closes with \"Joy,\" the raucous crowd pleaser from Car Wheels. This performance originally aired on April 18, 2011.", "Bob Dylan has made some puzzling moves in his celebrated career, but the compilation that his record label recently released may be as odd as anything he's ever put out. The compilation, 50th Anniversary Collection, is a limited-edition, four-CD set that was only released in Europe. It seems to have been designed by the label to exploit a recent change in European copyright law. The collection is a scrapbook of recordings from the first years of Bob Dylan's career: unreleased home tapes, live performances from Greenwich Village folk clubs and outtakes from the sessions for his second studio album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The packaging of the 50th Anniversary Collection is minimal — just four discs, a brown paper cover and a cursory list of the 86 tracks. Dylan's record label declined requests to talk about the collection or its unconventional release strategy. But the subtitle, The Copyright Extension Collection, Volume 1, speaks for itself. \"Even record executives occasionally stray into honesty,\" says James Boyle, a law professor at Duke University. \"This is, in fact, a copyright extension collection. That's what it is.\" Boyle says Dylan's label appears to be exploiting an obscure but potentially lucrative change in European copyright law. The European Union recently extended the term of copyright for sound recordings from 50 years to 70 years. But, there's a catch. \"You actually have to have, at some point, distributed these songs during that initial 50-year period. These were masters that were lying in the vaults,\" Boyle says, \"and none of them had ever seen the light of day. And so he had to get them out before that 50-year period expired in order to get the extra 20 years.\" Because this material was recorded in 1962 and 1963, the label essentially has to use it or lose it to the public domain. In Britain, the European Union copyright extension is known as Cliff's Law — named after Sir Cliff Richard, the 1960s-era singer who pushed hard for its passage. In an interview with the BBC, Richard says it's not fair that artists should lose the right to collect royalties from their records just because those records happen to be 50 years old. \"That's my creative juices,\" Richard says. \"I created it, I helped to arrange it. I helped sometimes to produce it. And you make this record. And then someone takes it away before you're even dead.\" But critics say the copyright extension will mainly help record companies and artists like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who, whose recordings might otherwise begin entering the public domain in the next few years. \"The vast majority of musicians won't see a dime,\" Boyle says. \"The evidence was that in fact, the benefits would go to very, very few people — the megastars.\" Boyle says the European Union law does include a few provisions that are supposed to help common musicians, too. After 50 years, for example, they can terminate their original contracts with their record labels and get ownership of their recordings back. But Boyle says there's a catch here, too. \"In order for them to be able to exercise this termination, it had to be that the record label hadn't put a new version out within a year of the directive passing,\" Boyle says. \"So we're probably going to see a large number of reissued songs, or aging rockers are gonna be terminating their deals and getting their rights back over their recordings.\" Whatever its intentions, Boyle thinks the copyright extension will ultimately end up hurting the public. Dylan fans in Europe might beg to differ, though: If they weren't lucky enough to snatch up one of the 100 physical copies of the discs, they can buy MP3s of the Copyright Extension Collection from Dylan's website. The rest of us can bid for one of those copies on eBay — where one recently sold for more than $1,000 — or wait for a proper U.S. release. SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Bob Dylan has made some moves in his epical career that have left a few people puzzled. But the compilation that Mr. Dylan's record label recently released may be as odd as anything that he's ever put out. The label released a limited edition of the four-CD set, and only in Europe. As NPR's Joel Rose reports, the collection seems designed to exploit a recent change in European copyright law. JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: The collection is a scrapbook of recordings from the first years of Bob Dylan's career - unreleased home tapes, live performances from Greenwich Village folk clubs, and out-takes from the sessions for \"The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.\" (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, \"MIXED UP CONFUSION\") ROSE: The packaging of this 50th anniversary collection is minimal: just four discs, a brown paper cover, and a cursory list of the 86 tracks. Dylan's record label declined requests to talk about the collection, or its unconventional release strategy. But the subtitle - \"The Copyright Extension Collection, Volume 1\" - speaks for itself. JAMES BOYLE: Even record executives occasionally stray into honesty. This is, i", "NPR's Rob Gifford reports from Beijing where a list of the 50 wealthiest Chinese was recently released. It includes everyone from actors to entrepreneurs to communist officials, and says a lot about how Chinese society is changing.", "After weeks of scrutiny over his work at consulting firm McKinsey & Company, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg released a list of nine clients that he worked for while employed there. The South Bend, Ind., mayor released the list one day after McKinsey said it would release him from the nondisclosure agreement he signed while working there. McKinsey was Buttigieg's first post-college employer. The list of clients Buttigieg released includes: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Canadian supermarket chain Loblaws, Best Buy, the National Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, The Energy Foundation, the Defense Department and the U.S. Postal Service. In a statement, Buttigieg said his decision to release the list of clients was in line with his values. \"Now, voters can see for themselves that my work amounted to mostly research and analysis. They can also see that I value both transparency and keeping my word,\" he said. \"Neither of these qualities are something we see coming out of Washington, especially from this White House. It's time for that to change.\" Buttigieg had been under intense pressure in recent days to disclose the clients that he worked for at McKinsey, open his fundraisers to reporters and provide more information about the people raising money for his presidential campaign. McKinsey has faced scrutiny after The New York Times and ProPublica recently reported that McKinsey helped Immigration and Customs Enforcement find \"detention savings opportunities\" and that internal staff opposed some of the firm's work. As Buttigieg has risen to the top of the polls in Iowa, he has become a more frequent target of fellow Democrats, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has been challenging Buttigieg on the issue of transparency.", "An activist for women driving recently released from Saudi prison was summoned back to security forces and told her conviction on terrorism charges was upheld. She remains under watch.", "Alex Chadwick talks with Bob Moon of <EM>Marketplace</EM> about Wall Street's new optimism. With the Federal Reserve hinting it may end the recent trend of interest rate hikes used to slow inflation, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 129 points -- the biggest one-day gain since October 28, when minutes from the most recent Fed meeting were released.", "Atlas Sound, a.k.a. the shoegazing electro-rock artist Bradford Cox, released one of my favorite albums last year, Let the Blind Lead Those Who Cannot See but Can Feel. So I was thrilled to learn recently that he'll release a quick follow-up this fall, called Logos. Cox, who also fronts the band Deerhunter and toured briefly with Animal Collective, collaborated with a number of other artists for the new album, including Laetitia Sadier and Andy Ramsay of Stereolab, Sasha Vine from Sian Alice Group, and Noah Lennox of Animal Collective and Panda Bear. In a recent press release, Cox says, \"On the (tour) bus (with Animal Collective), we often played improvised iPod games. We would take turns formulating a theme or unifying concept and then play three songs. The goal would be for everyone to try and figure out the theme. During one of these games, someone played 'What Am I Going to Do' by the Dovers. I was amazed at the hook -- a weird organ thing with drums and electric bass. I mentioned to Noah that someone should really sample that riff. He agreed and he taught me a little about sampling and matching up beats. This ended up as the collaborative effort 'Walkabout.' \" Here's a preview of the song \"Walkabout,\" from the upcoming album Logos, courtesy of The Fader:", "Melissa Block talks to Adam Davidson about growing income inequality at every level of our economy. Davidson has been pouring over data recently released from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.", "Jackrabbits have all but disappeared from Yellowstone National Park, according to a recently released study. Joel Berger of the Wildlife Conservation Society talks to Alex Chadwick about the mysterious absence of the once common animal.", "Singer-songwriter Angel Olsen released her debut album in 2011 after spending time working with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy. Her third album, Burn Your Fire for No Witness, was released in February. Olsen's voice can be intense, even chilling, in ways that blend perfectly with her band. She recently moved from Chicago to Asheville, N.C., after recording Burn Your Fire for No Witness there. Here, Olsen performs a live set in the World Cafe studios.", "The Palestinian Authority reaches an agreement with armed Palestinian factions to continue the recent period of calm until the end of the year. The truce is contingent on Israel's cooperation in refraining from attacks and agreeing to release Palestinian prisoners.", "Your Christmas celebration is about to get funkier — and, it goes without saying, better. Sharon Jones And The Dap-Kings, one of the world's top soul bands ever since the release of Dap Dipping in 2002, has released a joy-packed album for the season — titled It's A Holiday Soul Party — and recently visited World Cafe to perform its songs live. Originally from North Augusta, Ga., Jones' family later relocated to New York City, where she sang in church and in recording sessions during her stint as a corrections officer on Rikers Island. When Jones connected with what became The Dap-Kings, it was magic. Their 2014 album, Give The People What They Want, was nominated for a Grammy. In recent years, Jones has been battling pancreatic cancer, but she's nevertheless maintained a busy performance schedule. So once the presents have been opened, clear them aside to make room for a much-needed holiday soul party.", "In recent weeks, NPR hosts, reporters and guests have incorrectly said or implied that WikiLeaks recently has disclosed or released roughly 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables. Although the website has vowed to publish \"251,287 leaked United States embassy cables,\" as of Dec. 28, 2010, only 1,942 of the cables had been released.", "Pacific Northwest singer-songwriter Misty Flowers plays intimate, eclectic folk music on her most recent full length album, Passion. It was released last July. Her previous CD was Rhythm of Change, released in 2005. She's currently working on a third record, aiming for a release in late Summer. She is also regularly performs around the northwest Washington and British Columbia area. Flowers often plays solo, but sometimes teams with her husband Warren Meier. They have a five-year-old daughter, who plays lead guitar and sings harmony vocals. \"Most of my material has come from shifts in perception, my daughter, and those I love, or grew to loathe, along the way,\" Flowers said, who has no formal music training. \"My music is simple, but full of heart. From heartbreak to laughter, I write about inspirations and challenges we all meet.\"", "Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Thursday revealed a bit more about his tax history, telling reporters: \"I never paid less than 13 percent\" in the past 10 years. The Obama campaign's response: \"Prove it.\" Romney's statement came during an appearance in South Carolina and followed weeks of demands — mostly from Democrats, but also from some Republicans — that Romney release several years of his tax returns. He has released his 2010 tax returns, which showed an effective federal tax rate of 13.9 percent, and has promised to release his 2011 returns before the election. The Senate's top Democrat, Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, has claimed that an unnamed source told him Romney paid no taxes over the past decade. \"I did go back and look at my taxes and over the past 10 years I never paid less than 13 percent,\" said Romney, who was in South Carolina for a fundraiser. \"I think the most recent year is 13.6 or something like that. So I paid taxes every single year. Harry Reid's charge is totally false.\" Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith responded in a statement: \"Since there is substantial reason to doubt his claims, we have a simple message for him: prove it. ... Given Mitt Romney's secrecy about his returns ... he has forfeited the right to have us take him just at his word.\" Romney is under no legal requirement to release more tax records. But his wealth (which Forbes estimates at $230 million), the campaign's emphasis on economic issues and tax rates, and recent political history would indicate that the calls for Romney to release more tax records will continue. Since 1980 (when Republican Ronald Reagan released just one year of returns) only one party nominee or presumptive nominee other than Romney has released fewer than six years of returns, according to PolitiFact. That was Republican John McCain, who released two years of returns in 2008. \"The fascination with taxes I paid I find to be very small-minded compared to the broad issues that we face,\" Romney said Thursday. In an interview with NBC conducted during the Olympics but scheduled to air later on Thursday, Romney's wife, Ann, also addressed the issue: \"We have been very transparent to what's legally required of us,\" she told NBC. \"There's going to be no more tax releases given.\"", "A new report from the Congressional Budget Office shows the recently released Republican plan won't significantly expand insurance coverage to the tens of millions of Americans who lack health insurance. And on Saturday, debate begins on the Democrats' health bill in the House.", "Nude Beach, a punk trio from Brooklyn, is today's guest on World Cafe. The band recently released a double album called 77, and it's full of catchy power-pop tunes. Formed in 2008 while its members were still in high school, the band includes guitarist and singer Chuck Betz, drummer and singer Ryan Naideau, and bassist Jim Shelton. Nude Beach made three albums together before releasing 77 in October. In this session, we'll learn what the title 77 signifies and hear some of its songs performed live.", "World Cafe's guest today is R&B and soul singer-songwriter Macy Gray. Her 1991 debut On How Life Is contained the massive hit \"I Try,\" and she's released a string of solo records since. On her two most recent releases, Gray has turned to taking on the songs of others, including an album-length cover of Stevie Wonder's Talking Book. Her new album — the gritty, raw The Way -- marks Gray's return to her own songs. \"I was coming up with stupid stuff, like, you know, 'I Love You' and stuff like that,\" she says about her hiatus from original releases. \"It's just a matter of feeling what you're doing.\"", "The Black Seeds' members hail from Wellington, New Zealand, where they've cultivated a unique and energetic style of reggae-fusion. Fronted by vocalists Barnaby Weir and Daniel Weetman, the band has experienced crossover success by exploring dub, funk and reggae sounds. The group released its first album in 2001 and, in spite of its worldwide popularity, never released a record in North America until last year's Solid Ground. The eight-piece band has since toured in the U.S., and recently stopped in to record a live session for WXPN's World Cafe.", "The limits of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's authority appear to be showing again with word from that country's official news outlet that: \"Iran's Judiciary has rejected recent media reports on the imminent release of the two American nationals that were convicted of spying on behalf of the United States.\" As we reported Tuesday, Ahmadinejad told NBC News that Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal would be released \"in two days.\" Also yesterday, a lawyer for the men said bail had been set at $500,000 each — the same amount paid when a third American, Sarah Shourd, was released last year. The three had been arrested in July 2009 when they crossed from Iraq into Iran. They were hiking and say they got lost. Iran accused and convicted them of spying. But now, according to Iran's Press TV: \"The Public Relations Department of Iran's Judiciary announced on Wednesday that it is still examining pleas by lawyers of the two defendants for their release on bail. Information about the case will be released by the Judiciary and other reports on the issue are not considered reliable, the announcement read.\" The Associated Press calls the judiciary's announcement \"a potentially embarrassing rejection\" of Ahmadinejad and \"a swipe at [his] hopes of timing the release the Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal with his expected arrival in New York next week for the U.N. general assembly.\"", "This week we're featuring select episodes from our Guest DJ archives. Today we've got a conversation with Randy Newman. The singer, composer and pianist recently released his 11th solo album. It's called Dark Matter. Bob Boilen originally spoke with Newman back in 2008 when Newman released his previous record, Harps And Angels. The two talked about Newman's musical family, how Ray Charles has been the biggest influence in his music career and what it was like hearing The Beatles for the first time.", "Renowned actor Christopher Plummer has graced the screen since television's earliest productions. He is best known for his performance as the Baron Von Trapp in The Sound of Music. Plummer's memoir, In Spite of Myself, will be released next week. The great grandson of a Canadian prime minister, Plummer tells how \"this young bilingual wastrel, incurably romantic, spoiled rotten, tore himself away from the ski slopes to break into the big bad world of theatre, not from the streets up but from an Edwardian living room down.\" He has made over 125 films since he began his professional career as a Shakespearian stage performer in the late 1940s, including more recent releases, Syriana, Inside Man and A Beautiful Mind. This interview was originally broadcast on Nov. 20, 2007.", "Singer-songwriter Kyle Andrews makes simple, keyboard-inflected pop songs with drum loops and guitars -- and for the most part, he does it all by himself, with an ear for melody that's as strong as his songwriting ability. After moving from Chicago to Nashville, in 2004 Andrews recorded and self-released his debut EP, Various Stages of Nudity. Constant writing and gigging in the two years that followed eventually culminated in the release of his first full-length, Amos in Ohio, in 2006. Originally released locally in Nashville, Amos in Ohio was recently reissued by Badman; its 13 songs constitute Andrews' cleanest, tightest work yet. Instantly memorable, the album is packed with infectious hooks, especially on the title track and the upbeat \"Moon Tea.\"", "Behold the power of the hyper-collaborative rap septet. For the past 10 years, Doomtree has grown from a ragtag group of novice MCs and beatmakers to Minneapolis' premier hip-hop crew, without losing its aggressively earnest ethos in the process. The group's latest release, No Kings, caps off a dizzying run of Doomtree members' solo releases and side projects, which include a pair of punk- and noise-influenced Rhymesayers releases from P.O.S.; highly regarded albums from spoken-word artist, essayist and singer Dessa; collaborations between multi-talented producer Lazerbeak and bombastic spitter Mike Mictlan; a solo release from heartfelt sociopolitical rapper Sims; and a solo album from introspective mood-shifter Cecil Otter. Add in Otter's mash-up project Wugazi and Lazerbeak's solo albums, which range from rock to dance, and a few dizzying patterns start to emerge: Doomtree's preferred sounds and strengths reside all over the map, but the eternally prolific crew never stops pushing forward. Each member's turn in the spotlight helps him or her refine a sound and further develop a personality, but there's always a return back to the collective; solo tours and release cycles are broken up by hometown pride-fests like the annual Doomtree Blowout at First Avenue, which recently sold out the club for seven days straight. As each individual star shines brighter, they regroup to form a tighter and more illuminating constellation. In that regard, No Kings is a triumph — it maintains an incredible balance of power, neither drowning out nor over-accentuating any of the members, and artistically reflects the group's egalitarian philosophy. \"Seek not to oppress, and don't tolerate any oppression,\" Dessa said during Doomtree's recent session with 89.3 The Current, while Sims described the group as \"basically a co-op.\" That kind of DIY-circa-2012 energy has helped propel the band to national success, and has earned Doomtree widespread support in a hometown that can be leery of bands who enjoy too much commercial success. In the words of Sims on Doomtree's blistering single, \"Bangarang,\" \"I've built more than a rap career — I've got my family here.\" The group welcomes new fans into that family every day. Set List \"Beacon\" \"Bangarang\" Personnel P.O.S. Dessa Lazerbeak Mike Mictlan Sims Cecil Otter Paper Tiger (producer) Credits Host: Mark Wheat Video: Nate Ryan and Eric Schleicher Production: Nate Ryan Audio: Michael DeMark", "Brooklyn-based trio Elizabeth & The Catapult makes its first appearance on Mountain Stage, recorded live at the Culture Center Theater in Charleston, W. Va. Showcasing the songs and voice of Elizabeth Ziman, Elizabeth & The Catapult draws from coffeehouse folk to scrappy jazz to indie pop. Ziman studied classical piano until age 16, at which point she began shifting her focus toward singing, and in 2002 toured as a backing vocalist for soul great Patti Austin (a gig she shared with recent Grammy winner Esperanza Spalding). After returning to New York, Ziman formed a trio and quickly caught the ear of several major labels with a self-released EP, which lead to a deal with Verve Records in 2008. For its major label debut, Taller Children, Elizabeth & The Catapult traveled to the studio of Bright Eyes' Mike Mogis in Omaha, Neb. The group's most recent release, The Other Side of Zero, takes its name from Leonard Cohen's Book of Longing. Elizabeth & The Catapult's set is followed by the Mountain Stage band's Bob Thompson, with his rendition of King Oliver's \"West End Blues.\" This segment originally aired on May 10th, 2011.", "NPR's Scott Simon talks to former Cy Young winner Denny McLain -- the last major league pitcher to win 30 games in a season -- about his recent release from prison, Pete Rose, and trying to pick up the pieces of a life." ]

[ "Cardi B" ]

[ "Like what I usually wanna do, suck myself.", "Some people don't know what to talk about.", "wHaT bAtHrOoM dO TrAnS pEoPlE uSe????", "People.\n\nCan.\n\nDo.\n\nWhat.\n\nThey.\n\nWant.", "That sucks. What kind of music do you usually listen to?", "I refuse to believe that some people just hear silence when doing that! Aren’t those thoughts?! Are you some kind of robot cause what?!? I think a crazier thing is bilingual people, what language do you think they think in lol?", "what do YOU mean by \"you people\"", "What do French people smoke? Oui’d", "When people listen to the experts and do what they're supposed to do.", "I don't hate religion, just what people do with it.", "As a muslim myself i hate it. What these people do is the complete opposite of what Islam teaches.", "Stopped giving a fck what other people think of what you are/do. As long as you are not doing something wrong.", "What do you mean you people? S/", "Give her some milk. What else would you do?", "People in comfortable relationships do that?\n\n\nWhat happened to evolution?", "Truley wonderful what lazy people might do to help science", "Do people have sex? What kind of video game is that", "That's what it sounded like to me. Some people are weirder than most.", "\\*what's or \\*what is ....\n\nI correct people.", "Cuz people are annoying and get in the way of what I wanna do", "I've got some milk. What can you do for me?", "What people do in the privacy of their own house is none of my business.", "An askreddit post about what other people would do in this situation", "It’s false since it heavily depends on the situation \nIf someone with high moral standards do something against their morals they will feel bad for it whether they’re caught or not. That’s why some people turn themselves in.\nSome cases people don’t feel bad for what they’ve done no matter what also", "What to do next...", "Do what Europe did long ago put them on a boat to some other country", "It feels more like sucking a cock than having your cock sucked. Take from that what you will", "If they do what they meant", "People who judge other people’s life choices that do not affect them what's your issue?", "What if? What do you want in terms of a response?", "Depends on what it is, where I am, and what I'm doing.", "It does what I've tried to do for eternities: separate reasonable people from morons." ]

[ "JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia's anti-graft commission has arrested the governor of conservative Aceh province on suspicion of receiving bribes, an official said Wednesday.\nIrwandi Yusuf was among 10 people arrested Tuesday evening in separate locations in Aceh, said Febri Diansyah, spokesman for the Corruption Eradication Commission.\nDiansyah said investigators seized about 500 million rupiah ($35,000) in cash. The other nine arrested included a district chief and two assistants to officials.\nYusuf, a former leader of the rebel Free Aceh Movement, known as GAM, was elected governor for a second time in 2017.\nAdvertisement\nYusuf was flown Wednesday morning to the Indonesian capital and taken to the headquarters of the anti-graft commission for questioning.\nAceh is the only province in Muslim-majority Indonesia governed by Islamic Shariah law." ]

[ "BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesia’s national police chief has ordered an investigation into the detention of 12 transgender women in the province of Aceh, officials said on Friday, after reports that they were stripped, beaten and forced to cut their hair before being released without charge.\nIndonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population but Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra, is the only province that enforces Islamic law and outlaws homosexuality.\nReligious police and vigilantes in the ultra-conservative province often raid homes and places of work and detain people on suspicion of engaging in homosexual activity.\nPolice in North Aceh raided hair salons - where transgender people often work - last weekend and briefly detained 12 individuals. Rights activists and media reports said they were forced to cut their hair and were stripped and beaten.\n“There were photos circulated that led us to suspect that there had been physical action taken against the suspects,” Misbahul Munauwar, a spokesman for Aceh police, said. “The national police chief has instructed us to investigate those photos and to determine if there was any...procedural or ethical violation.”\nA national police spokesman confirmed that police chief Tito Karnavian had ordered the investigation.\nHuman Rights Watch and other rights groups welcomed the move, which comes amid a rising tide of hostility against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community.\nPolice in Aceh and elsewhere have stepped up raids on what they call “gay spas” and “gay sex parties” in recent months, detaining people on charges of violating strict anti-pornography laws.\nDozens of protesters on Friday staged an anti-LGBT rally outside a mosque in the provincial capital Banda Aceh.\n“We don’t hate gay, bisexual or transgender people. What we hate is their actions, and if we can prove their actions, they will be punished,” Aceh governor Irwandi Yusuf told the small crowd.\nLast year, the provincial and central governments drew international condemnation after authorities in Aceh tried two young men on charges of engaging in gay sex and then publicly caned them - the first such case in the country.\nIndonesia’s parliament is also drafting revisions to the national criminal code that could ban all consensual sex outside marriage.\nThe parliamentary commission drawing up recommendations has still to finalise its proposals, but a draft seen by Reuters includes measures to criminalise extramarital sex, same-sex relations and co-habitation, all of which were previously unregulated.", "BANDA ACEH, Indonesia Two Indonesians are to go on trial in an Islamic court for having gay sex and could receive 100 strokes of the cane if found guilty, officials in the conservative province of Aceh said, sparking calls from a rights group for their release.\nAceh is the only province in Muslim-majority Indonesia that criminalises same-sex relations and that uses sharia as its legal code in addition to the national criminal code.\n\"The case has been sent to the sharia court of Aceh... It involves sodomy which can be punished by 100 lashes,\" Marzuki, head of investigations with Aceh's religious police, said on Monday.\nHuman Rights Watch (HRW) called on Indonesia to release the men who were detained last month after vigilantes reported them to religious police for allegedly engaging in gay sex.\n\"These men had their privacy invaded in a frightening and humiliating manner and now face public torture for the 'crime' of their alleged sexual orientation,\" HRW's Phelim Kine said in a statement.\n\"Indonesian authorities should immediately and unconditionally release the two men.\"\nIn 2014, Aceh enacted a law that punishes anybody caught engaging in consensual gay sex with 100 lashes, 100 months in jail or a fine of 1,000 grams of gold.\nIt also sets out punishment for sex crimes, unmarried people engaging in displays of affection, adulterous relationships and underage sex.\nAuthorities in the province on the northern tip of Sumatra island caned 339 people in 2016 for a range of crimes, according to HRW.\nReligious police in Aceh have also been known to target Muslim women without head scarves or those wearing tight clothes, and people drinking alcohol or gambling.\nTwo women were detained in October last year on suspicion of being lesbians after they were seen hugging in public, and were made to undergo \"rehabilitation\", according to media reports.\nThe lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community has faced growing pressure since high-ranking government officials last year expressed reservations about activism by its members.\n(This story corrects name of Aceh police official in paragraph 3)\n(Reporting by Reuters stringer; Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Ed Davies and Nick Macfie)", "Reuters file image used for representational purpose only.\nBANDA ACEH: At least 10 people have been killed and dozens more injured after a fire at an illegal oil well in Indonesia's Aceh province, authorities said Wednesday.\nAn oil spill sparked a huge blaze about 1.30am (1830 GMT Tuesday) in a residential area that torched at least three houses and was still out of control mid-morning.\n\"The [fire] is still soaring high and has not yet successfully been extinguished,\" Saiful, head of Aceh's Ranto Peureulak subdistrict, said.\nAt least 10 bodies have been recovered and the death toll is expected to rise, police said, while injured victims were being treated at local hospitals.\nFirefighters were at the scene, with state-owned oil company Pertamina assisting their efforts.\nEast Aceh is dotted with numerous small-scale oil mining operations, which are often operated illegally by local villagers.", "This is the moment a couple accused of having sex before marriage were given 25 lashes as punishment under strict sharia law in place in Indonesia.\nThe couple was one of four pairs who were handed between 23 and 25 lashes after being found guilty of having sex outside of wedlock, which is forbidden under sharia.\nThe sentence was carried out in the city of Banda Aceh, at the tip of Indonesia's Sumatra island, the only place in the Muslim-majority country which recognises sharia as part of its official legal system.\nSharia, meaning 'the way', lays out guidelines for Muslims on how to live their daily lives. Divided into four parts, the most controversial deals with criminal punishment, and proscribing stoning for adulterers and the removal of a hand for theft.\nA woman accused of having sex before marriage is given 25 lashes as punishment for her crimes in Banda Aceh, Indonesia\nAceh is the only province in Muslim-majority Indonesia which has accepted sharia law into its official legal system\nThe woman was hooded and dressed in white before being led out on to a stage where she was beaten in front of a crowd\nSharia, which means 'the way', proscribes extreme forms of punishment for some crime - including whipping for blasphemy\nThe woman was one of four couples handed the punishment in the semi-autonomous province, which enforces sharia law\nThe man was also dressed in a white shirt while his punishment was carried out, though was allowed to stay standing\nUnder the state's sharia code, whippings must be carried out with a cane 'no bigger than the width of a small finger'", "BANDA ACEH, Indonesia: Firefighters in Indonesia are struggling to contain a blaze at an oil well in the northwestern province of Aceh that killed ten people and injured as many as 40, authorities said on Wednesday.\nFlames towered over houses and trees as firefighters hosed down the area while villagers watched, in pictures posted on social media by Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman of Indonesia's disaster mitigation agency.\n\"We are still collecting data on the number of victims because the fire has not been extinguished yet,\" the agency said in a statement.\nThe fire broke out in the east Aceh district in the early hours of Wednesday, after a well of depth 250 metres (820 ft) overflowed and residents gathered to collect the oil, the agency added.\nDozens of people were being rushed to hospital in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, it said, adding that state oil firm Pertamina was providing equipment to help control the fire.\nThe head of police in east Aceh said the oil well might have been drilled illegally and the fire might have been started when someone was smoking a cigarette.\nAdvertisement\nAdvertisement\n\"We suspect this is a well drilled by the community...and we suspect there was someone smoking in the area at the time,\" said police official Wahyu Kuncoro. The number of injured stood at 40, he added.\nSuch illegal drilling is common in Aceh, where Pertamina operates an oil field.\n(Reporting by Reuters stringer in Banda Aceh; Additional reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor; Writing by Ed Davies; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)", "JAKARTA (Reuters) - The speaker of Indonesia’s parliament, who is being investigated for his suspected involvement in a $170 million graft scandal, has tendered his resignation, two members of the assembly said on Monday.\nSetya Novanto was arrested last month over his suspected role in the scandal linked to a national electronic identity card scheme.\nAnti-corruption investigators then took him into custody from where he sent a letter to assembly leaders pleading to be allowed to keep his job while he fought the charges.\n“Mr Novanto has resigned,” member of parliament Yandri Susanto told Reuters, referring to a letter in which Novanto announced his decision.\n“He didn’t say why.”\nA replacement for him as speaker was expected to be decided by his party, Golkar, at an extraordinary meeting on Dec. 19, said Dito Ganinduto, a member of parliament from Novanto’s Golkar party.\nNovanto had not resigned as chairman of Golkar, Ganinduto said.\nA lawyer for Novanto, Maqdir Ismail, deferred questions on the matter to acting Golkar chairman Idrus Marham.\nNovanto had clung to power through several previous corruption cases.\nHis latest battle with the graft agency has gripped Indonesia, where newspapers have splashed the story on front pages and memes mocking him have circulated on social media.", "Two men in Indonesia's Aceh province have been publicly caned dozens of times for consensual gay sex, a punishment rights advocates denounced as \"medieval torture\". (May 23)", "An oil spill sparked a large-scale fire in Indonesia's Aceh province on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people and injuring dozens more.\n\"The [fire] is still soaring high and has not yet successfully been extinguished,\" said Saiful, head of Aceh's Ranto Peureulak subdistrict, which is located in northwest region of Indonesian island of Sumatra.\nWhat we know so far:\nA blaze started following an oil spill at about 1:30 a.m. local time on Wednesday (1830 GMT Tuesday).\nIndonesian authorities said at least 10 people were killed and the death toll was expected to rise.\nAt least five houses were torched as fire spread through a residential area of Pasir Putih village in Aceh.\nThe fire remains out of control hours after the start of the blaze.\nThe Indonesian disaster agency said pipe welding may have caused the fire.\nIllegal wells used for profit\nLocal villagers illegally operate many small oil wells in the eastern section of Aceh province, which boasts significant energy reserves.\nAccording to the state-run Antara news agency, residents of Pasir Putih were collecting oil from the surface of the well when the fire broke out. Officials said state-owned oil company Pertamina was helping firefighters combating the blaze.\nMore to come...\ndj/aw (AFP, Reuters, dpa, AP)", "The incident occurred in the north of Sumatra Island, NDMA spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told Xinhua news agency.\nFirefighters in Indonesia are struggling to contain a blaze at an oil well in the northwestern province of Aceh that killed ten people and injured as many as 40, authorities said on Wednesday. Flames towered over houses and trees as firefighters hosed down the area while villagers watched, in pictures posted on social media by Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman of Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency.\n“We are still collecting data on the number of victims because the fire has not been extinguished yet,” the agency said in a statement. The fire broke out in the east Aceh district in the early hours of Wednesday, after a well of depth 250 metres (820 ft) overflowed and residents gathered to collect the oil, the agency added. Dozens of people were being rushed to hospital in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, it said, adding that state oil firm Pertamina was providing equipment to help control the fire.\nThe head of police in east Aceh said the oil well might have been drilled illegally and the fire might have been started when someone was smoking a cigarette. “We suspect this is a well drilled by the community…and we suspect there was someone smoking in the area at the time,” said police official Wahyu Kuncoro. The number of injured stood at 40, he added. Such illegal drilling is common in Aceh, where Pertamina operates an oil field.", "AT least 10 people have been killed and dozens more injured after a fire at an illegal oil well in Indonesia’s Aceh province.\nAuthorities confirmed an oil spill sparked a huge blaze about 6.30pm local time (5.30am AEDT) that torched at least three houses and was still out of control mid-morning.\n“The [fire] is still soaring high and has not yet successfully been extinguished,” Saiful, head of Aceh’s Ranto Peureulak subdistrict who goes by one name, said.\nAceh is a semi-autonomous Indonesian area on the northwest tip of Sumatra Island. It’s known for its beaches, diving sites and mountain wilderness areas.\nIt comes nearly a month after an oil spill at state-owned oil and gas firm Pertamina, in East Kalimantan, which spread across an area greater than the city of Paris and caused an out-of-control blaze that killed five fishermen.\nIndonesian authorities declared a state of emergency after the spill, which has caused significant environmental and economic damage.\nMore to come.", "GAYO LUES, Indonesia: More than 10,000 people turned out in Indonesia's Aceh on Sunday (Aug 13) to stage a record-breaking song and dance performance stressing the need to conserve a threatened national park in the westernmost province.\nThe men, clad in elaborate black and yellow traditional costumes, sat in neat rows, clapping their hands on their shoulders and laps and moving in an increasingly fast-paced rhythm to a traditional song.\nThe saman, or \"the dance of a thousand hands\", is one of the country's most popular. In 2011 it was included in the UNESCO list of items of intangible cultural heritage.\nThe event was aimed at attracting more visitors to the province, the head of the local tourism agency, Syafruddin, told AFP.\nParticipants take part in a mass traditional Saman dance performance in Aceh on Indonesia's Sumatra island on August 13, 2017 AFP/CHAIDEER MAHYUDDIN\nThe men, mostly from the ethnic Gayo community, made occasional wave-like movements without breaking formation.\nAdvertisement\nAdvertisement\nTheir song focused on the importance of protecting the province's Mount Leuser National Park, home to rare Sumatran tigers and elephants, which is threatened by rampant poaching and rainforest destruction due to the expansion of palmoil plantations.\nThousands of spectators flocked to an open field tucked amid lush green hills in Gayo Lues district to watch the performance.\nThe Indonesian Museum of Record certified it as breaking a national record with 10,001 participants - beating last year's record of 6,600.\nMore than 10,000 people turned out in Indonesia's Aceh to stage a record-breaking song and dance performance stressing the need to conserve a threatened national park AFP/CHAIDEER MAHYUDDIN\nThe dance is usually accompanied by a song performed in unison. It emphasises teamwork, a symbol of unity.\n\"In the old days the lyrics were usually about spreading Islamic teachings. These days we can adjust the lyrics to deliver any message we wish to convey to the audience,\" Syafruddin said.\nAceh's international image has been tarnished by its public punishments under Sharia law, such as caning for homosexuality.\n\"I am very impressed with the performance, the dancers synchronised very well and it makes me proud as an Indonesian. It was incredible,\" Sarah, a visitor from Jakarta, told AFP.", "JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Budget airline AirAsia said its flights to Indonesia’s conservative Aceh province will have only male cabin crew after Acehnese authorities insisted female flight attendants wear head coverings.\nOther airlines have said they will comply and require female crew to cover their heads on flights to the Shariah-law practicing province.\nAirAsia Indonesia’s corporate secretary Baskoro Adiwiyono said Friday that the airline was ensuring its flights adhere to regulations.\n“For the time being, all AirAsia flights from and to Aceh will be operated by male cabin crew,” he said.\nAceh authorities on Wednesday circulated a letter with their demand to several airlines.\nThe letter, issued by the chief of Aceh Besar district, which oversees the airport in the provincial capital Banda Aceh, said female flight attendants are obliged to wear the hijab in accordance with the rules of Islam and airlines should support the implementation of Shariah law in the province.\nNational airline Garuda Indonesia and its budget arm Citilink said they “support the suggestions.”\n“Garuda respects and upholds local wisdom,” said its spokesman Ikhsan Rosan.\nAceh is the only province in Muslim-majority Indonesia where a strict form of Islam is mandatory. Public caning is a punishment for adultery, gambling, homosexuality, tight clothing and other behavior deemed against Islam.", "BANDA ACEH, Indonesia >> Muslims in Indonesia’s conservative and semiautonomous Aceh province protested an investigation into local police who rounded up and publicly humiliated transgender women.\nSeveral hundred people rallied outside the Baiturrahman Grand Mosque in the provincial capital after Friday prayers, carrying banners the read “LGBT is not Aceh local wisdom” and “Free Aceh from transvestites.”\nVideos circulated online showed that police forced the 12 transgender women to dress as men, shaved their heads and berated them about not being masculine. They were rounded up last weekend in raids on hair salons in North Aceh’s Lhoksukon neighborhood. Parents claimed they had harassed or seduced their teenage sons, according to police.\nSocial media in Muslim-majority Indonesia have exploded with criticism of the police’s behavior.\nAdvertisement\nNational Police spokesman Mochammad Iqbal said an internal police unit is investigating officers including North Aceh police Chief Untung Sangaji.\nThe rally, which was attended by Aceh Gov. Irwandi Yusuf, was mostly peaceful.\n“We do not hate LGBT people, but what we hate is their behavior,” Yusuf told the crowd, which chanted Sangaji’s name.\n“We cannot blame the actions of the North Aceh police,” Yusuf said.\nAceh is the only province in Indonesia to practice Shariah law. Its implementation by religious police and local authorities, allowed by an autonomy deal with the central government that ended a separatist war, has become increasingly harsh.\nCalls to the mobile numbers of some of the transgender women were answered by activists or relatives.\n“They are still very traumatized by the bad treatment against them, they’re afraid to talk to anyone in this situation, please understand,” said rights activist Fais Ichall.\nAmnesty International Indonesia Executive Director Usman Hamid said the raids on beauty salons are just the latest example of the authorities arbitrarily targeting transgender people simply for who they are.\n“Cutting the hair of those arrested to ‘make them masculine’ and forcing them to dress like men are forms of public shaming and amount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” he said in a statement.\nSangaji told reporters earlier this week that the police actions were discussed beforehand with Islamic scholars and police were acting according to Aceh’s laws.\n“We helped them to return to their nature as men,” Sangaji said.\nIqbal said the 12 were released late Monday. He said they can return to work and would be given training to improve their skills as long as they dress as men.\nKarmini reported from Jakarta, Indonesia.", "Firefighters struggled to contain the blaze at the northwestern province of Aceh which is suspected to have been caused by a lit cigarette.\nFire crews hosed down the area while villagers watched as flames towered over houses and trees.\nIndonesia’s disaster mitigation agency said in a statement: “We are still collecting data on the number of victims because the fire has not been extinguished yet.”", "Indonesian Muslims Protest against LGBT Community in Banda Aceh\nBANDA ACEH, Indonesia – Muslim activists in the Indonesian province of Aceh gathered on Friday to protest against the LGBT community.\nAround 300 protesters, with women dressed in burqas separated from the male demonstrators, held banners denouncing homosexuality, chanted slogans such as “No place for LGBT in Aceh!,” and set fire to a stuffed toy effigy meant to represent members of the LGBT community.\nThe rally was attended by members of the House of Representatives from Aceh, including Nasir Jamil, who told protesters that he fully supported the action to deny the existence of the LGBT community in Aceh, an epa journalist reported.\n“This is contrary to the implementation of Islamic Sharia in Aceh. We do not give space to the LGBT,” Jamil said.\nThe governor of Aceh, Irwandi Yusuf, was also present at the rally, where he signed a petition to ban the LGBT community in the province.\n“LGBT is a violation in Aceh,” Irwandi told the crowd.\nIndonesia is home to the world’s largest Muslim population and most practice a moderate form of the religion, with only the province of Aceh adhering to the strict Sharia code of Islamic law.\nHuman rights groups and NGOs have reported that gay and transgender people across Indonesia have increasingly become the targets of abuse and marginalization.\nHuman Rights Watch alleged last year that police had started to use an anti-pornography law to criminalize the entire LGBT community.\nAccording to HRW, homophobic rhetoric by politicians and public functionaries has increased considerably since Jan. 2016, in many cases instigated by Islamist groups that oppose homosexuality in the country with the biggest Muslim population in the world.\nLast month, two gay men were detained and remain in custody after they were arrested by police on charges of sharing pornography on social media.\nAlthough Indonesian President Joko Widodo criticized discrimination against minorities in Oct. 2016, police interventions have continued.\nAuthorities carried out five more raids last year in the provinces of Aceh, eastern Java, Jakarta, northern Sumatra and western Java.\nHomosexuality is legal across Indonesia – except for in Sharia law-ruled Aceh province – and though the LGBT community has yet to meet acceptance, it had been tolerated in the past.\nHowever, in recent years members of this community have found themselves increasingly marginalized and even threatened by some authorities and hostile social trends.\nA survey presented last week in Jakarta by Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting found that 87.6 percent of Indonesians regard the LGBT community collective as a threat.", "JAKARTA: Indonesia’s former parliament speaker was handed a 15-year prison term on Tuesday in a victory for an ongoing clamp-down on widespread corruption. Setya Novanto had been accused of taking millions in kickbacks and bribes linked to the national roll-out of government ID cards. Prosecutors had demanded a 16-year sentence, some $7.4 million in fines and the seizure of Novanto’s considerable assets if he failed to pay the penalty. Novanto, who had managed to sidestep corruption allegations in the past, was accused of playing a key role in embezzlement from the $440 million ID card project, with some $170 million disappearing from state coffers. Several other politicians, government officials and businessmen have been charged in the scandal. Novanto, who dodged questioning by Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency for months, was arrested in hospital in November after he claimed to have been injured in a car crash. The reported accident came shortly after a failed raid on his palatial estate in a ritzy part of the capital.\nAFP", "At least 10 people were burned to death after an apparently unregulated oil well in Indonesia's Aceh province caught fire.\nNational Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said the well caught fire earlier Wednesday and is still burning.\nHe said the well was gushing when it ignited and many people were nearby trying to collect the oil.\nThe agency listed 19 people as injured and said five houses were destroyed by the inferno.", "BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesia’s national police chief has ordered an investigation into the detention of 12 transgender women in the province of Aceh, officials said on Friday, after reports that they were stripped, beaten and forced to cut their hair before being released without charge.\nIndonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population but Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra, is the only province that enforces Islamic law and outlaws homosexuality.\nReligious police and vigilantes in the ultra-conservative province often raid homes and places of work and detain people on suspicion of engaging in homosexual activity.\nPolice in North Aceh raided hair salons - where transgender people often work - last weekend and briefly detained 12 individuals. Rights activists and media reports said they were forced to cut their hair and were stripped and beaten.\n“There were photos circulated that led us to suspect that there had been physical action taken against the suspects,” Misbahul Munauwar, a spokesman for Aceh police, said. “The national police chief has instructed us to investigate those photos and to determine if there was any...procedural or ethical violation.”\nA national police spokesman confirmed that police chief Tito Karnavian had ordered the investigation.\nHuman Rights Watch and other rights groups welcomed the move, which comes amid a rising tide of hostility against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community.\nPolice in Aceh and elsewhere have stepped up raids on what they call “gay spas” and “gay sex parties” in recent months, detaining people on charges of violating strict anti-pornography laws.\nDozens of protesters on Friday staged an anti-LGBT rally outside a mosque in the provincial capital Banda Aceh.\n“We don’t hate gay, bisexual or transgender people. What we hate is their actions, and if we can prove their actions, they will be punished,” Aceh governor Irwandi Yusuf told the small crowd.\nLast year, the provincial and central governments drew international condemnation after authorities in Aceh tried two young men on charges of engaging in gay sex and then publicly caned them - the first such case in the country.\nIndonesia’s parliament is also drafting revisions to the national criminal code that could ban all consensual sex outside marriage.\nThe parliamentary commission drawing up recommendations has still to finalise its proposals, but a draft seen by Reuters includes measures to criminalise extramarital sex, same-sex relations and co-habitation, all of which were previously unregulated. [nL4N1PO3OW]", "EILEEN NG\nMalaysia.- F ormer Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak was arrested Tuesday by antigraft investigators and will be charged over his alleged role in the multibillion-dollar looting of a state investment fund, officials said.\nA government task force probing alleged theft and money laundering at the 1MDB state investment fund said Najib’s arrest was linked to the suspicious transfer of 42 million ringgit ($10.6 million) into his bank account from SRC International, a former 1MDB unit, using multiple intermediary companies.\nIt said in a brief statement that Najib will be brought to court on Wednesday to be charged, but didn’t give details of the charges against him. Najib’s arrest comes nearly two months after his coalition’s stunning rejection by voters in a May 9 general election.\nIn a pre-recorded video posted on social media hours after his arrest, Najib apologized to Malaysians but remained defiant. “I have done my best, but I realized it is not enough. I admit there are many weaknesses.... as a normal human being, I am not perfect but believe me, that the accusations against me and my family are not all true,” he said.\n“I will face it with perseverance. Truly, Allah knows.” The new government has reopened investigations into 1MDB that were stifled under Najib’s rule. Najib and his wife, who have been questioned over the SRC issue by the anti-graft agency, have been barred from leaving the country.\nPolice have also seized jewelry and valuables valued at more than 1.1 billion ringgit ($272 million) from properties linked to Najib, who has denied any wrongdoing. Najib is expected to face more than 10 counts of committing criminal breach of trust linked to SRC International, Malaysia’s Bernama news agency reported.\nIt said Malaysia’s new attorney general, Tommy Thomas, will head the prosecution in the case. “This was the inevitable outcome when Najib lost the election and lost his political immunity,” Bridget Welsh, a political science professor at John Cabot University in Rome, said in an email.\n“It shows the resolve of the new government to address previous abuses of power. It has been done judiciously so far and speaks to a needed reckoning for Malaysia and a key step toward a cleaner governance.”", "A Kenyan county governor was arrested on corruption charges on Wednesday, the national anti-graft agency said, part of a crackdown that has seen dozens of raids and investigations in the past two months.\nSospeter Ojaamong, the governor of western Busia County, made no immediate comment, but told KTN News television on Tuesday he was “clean as cotton, or snow”.\nThe director of public prosecutions, Noordin Haji, said on Tuesday Ojaamong and nine other officials would be prosecuted over the theft of millions of Kenyan shillings of public funds.\nHe said the charges against Ojaamong would include abuse of office and conspiracy to steal public funds, and centred on procurement practices linked to a solid waste management system in Busia, which borders Uganda.\nKenyan media have reported on more than a dozen graft scandals involving state agencies and officials since President Uhuru Kenyatta was re-elected last year. He has promised a renewed crackdown on graft.\nREUTERS", "AP, KUALA LUMPUR\nFormer Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak was arrested yesterday by anti-graft investigators and is to be charged over his alleged role in the multibillion-dollar looting of a state investment fund.\nA government task force probing alleged theft and money laundering at the 1 Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) state investment fund said that Najib’s arrest was linked to a suspicious transfer of 42 million ringgit (US$10.6 million) into his bank account from SRC International, a former 1MDB unit, using multiple intermediary companies.\nIt said in a brief statement that Najib is to be brought to court today to be charged, but did not give details of the charges against him.\nNajib’s arrest comes nearly two months after his coalition’s stunning rejection by voters in a May 9 general election.\nThe new government has reopened investigations into 1MDB that were stifled under Najib’s rule. Najib and his wife, who have been questioned over the SRC issue by the anti-graft agency, have been barred from leaving the country.\nPolice have also seized jewelry and valuables valued at more than 1.1 billion ringgit from properties linked to Najib, who has denied any wrongdoing.\nThe anti-corruption agency earlier yesterday questioned Riza Aziz, Najib’s stepson and a Hollywood film producer, as it stepped up its probe on 1MDB.\nRiza was solemn as he arrived at the anti-graft office and did not speak to reporters.\nUS investigators say Riza’s company, Red Granite Pictures Inc, used money stolen from 1MDB to finance Hollywood films, including the Martin Scorsese-directed The Wolf of Wall Street.\nRed Granite in March agreed to pay the US government US$60 million to settle claims that it benefited from the 1MDB scandal.\nThe civil suit against Red Granite was part of an effort to recover some of the US$4.5 billion that US prosecutors say was stolen from 1MDB. They say hundreds of millions from 1MDB landed in Najib’s bank accounts.\nThe 1MDB government task force this week said that 408 bank accounts involving funds of nearly 1.1 billion ringgit had been frozen.\nIt said the accounts, belonging to 81 people and 55 companies, are thought to have received funds from 1MDB between 2011 and 2015.", "An Indonesia government-owned oil company has accepted responsibility for a major oil spill off the coast of Borneo that caused the country to declare a state of emergency, despite denying culpability for almost a week. Oil erupted after an underwater pipeline was severed, leading to the deaths of four people in a fire as crude oil flooded the bay and poisoned local wildlife.\nAT least 10 people have been killed and dozens more injured after a fire at an illegal oil well in Indonesia’s Aceh province.\nAuthorities confirmed an oil spill sparked a huge blaze about 6.30pm local time (5.30am AEST) that torched at least three houses and was still out of control mid-morning.\n“The [fire] is still soaring high and has not yet successfully been extinguished,” Saiful, head of Aceh’s Ranto Peureulak subdistrict, said. (Saiful goes by one name.)\n10 people were reportedly killed when an oil well in East Aceh district caught fire at 2 a.m. this morning. The oil well is run by locals. Witnesses say the fire could have started from sparks from a welding work. Video: @BNPB_Indonesia pic.twitter.com/cCClOde30Y — Nuice Media (@nuicemedia) April 25, 2018\nAt least 10 bodies have been recovered and the death toll is expected to rise, police said, while injured victims were being treated at local hospitals.\nFirefighters were at the scene, with state-owned oil company Pertamina assisting their efforts.\nEast Aceh is dotted with numerous small-scale oil mining operations, which are often operated illegally by local villagers.\nAceh is a semi-autonomous Indonesian area on the northwest tip of Sumatra. It’s known for its beaches, diving sites and mountain wilderness areas.\nIndonesia to punish state firm over litany of failures behind Borneo oil spill: https://t.co/PcNreOPlui pic.twitter.com/R7QMzMQWf0 — Mongabay (@mongabay) April 19, 2018\nThe blaze comes nearly a month after an oil spill at state-owned oil and gas firm Pertamina, in East Kalimantan, which spread across an area greater than the city of Paris and caused an out-of-control blaze that killed five fishermen.\nIndonesian authorities declared a state of emergency after the spill, which has caused significant environmental and economic damage.\nMore to come.", "PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (AP) — The Latest on a corruption scandal involving former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak (all times local):\n4:55 p.m.\nA government official and an aide to former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak say Najib has been arrested by anti-graft officials.\nNajib's arrest comes nearly two months after his coalition's shocking defeat in a May 9 general election.\nThe official, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, said Najib was picked up from his house Tuesday and is being brought to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission's headquarters, and that the agency will issue a statement soon. The aide, who declined to be named, confirmed his arrest.\nAdvertisement\n___\n4:40 p.m.\nMalaysia's anti-corruption agency is questioning Riza Aziz, the stepson of former premier Najib Razak and a Hollywood film producer, as part of probe into alleged theft and money-laundering at the 1MDB state investment fund.\nAlleged corruption at the 1MDB fund helped bring on the unexpected defeat of Najib's coalition in May 9 polls. The new government reopened investigations that were stifled while Najib was in office.\nRiza was solemn as he arrived at the anti-graft office Tuesday and didn't speak to reporters.\nAdvertisement\nU.S. investigators say Riza's company, Red Granite Pictures Inc., used money stolen from 1MDB to finance Hollywood films including the Martin Scorsese-directed \"The Wolf of Wall Street.\" Red Granite agreed in March to pay the U.S. government $60 million to settle claims it benefited from the 1MDB scandal.", "Najib Razak Nicky Loh/Getty Images\nMalaysia's former prime minister Najib Razak was officially charged with criminal breach of trust on Wednesday.\nNajib lost his bid for re-election after being tainted by a financial scandal that saw billions of dollars go missing from the 1MDB state investment fund he created. Hundreds of millions of dollars were reportedly found in Najib's personal bank accounts, but he has denied any wrongdoing saying he received $680 million as a donation from Saudi Arabia.\nBut Malaysia's new prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, made investigating 1MDB an early priority of his government and on Tuesday Najib was arrested by anti-corruption officials. He was detained overnight and appeared in court on Wednesday morning.\nNajib was charged with three counts of criminal breach of trust, each of which faces a penalty of up to 20 years in prison and whipping. He was also charged under a specific section of anti-corruption laws that describe using an office or position for gratification, which could also lead to up to 20 yeears in jail and a fine five times the value of the siphoned money.\nAdvertisement\nThe attorney general is leading a 12-person team to prosecute Najib, according to Channel News Asia's Sumisha Naidu. Najib pleaded not guilty after the case was moved to the High Court.\nThe charges are in relation to the suspected mishandling and misappropriation of funds from SRC International, a former unit of state investment fund 1MDB, between 2011 and 2015. $US10.6 million was allegedly transferred from SRC to Najib's personal accounts, which Malaysia's former attorney general reportedly chose not to investigate.\nThe US Department of Justice has previously said over $4.5 billion was siphoned off from 1MDB. Mahathir, 92, last month said Najib was fully responsible for the scandal, and the case against his former protege was \"almost perfect.\"\nNajib's spokesman has called the charges \"politically motivated.\"\nSince leaving office, Najib has been barred from leaving the country and police seized $273 million-worth of valuable from properties linked to the former prime minister, including 567 handbags, 234 pairs of sunglasses, and 12,000 pieces of jewelry. Najib has said these items were gifts.", "Setya Novanto is accused of orchestrating a scheme to steal almost 40 per cent of the budget for a government contract for the national identity card. PHOTO: REUTERS\nJAKARTA: An Indonesian court yesterday sentenced the former speaker of Parliament, Setya Novanto, to 15 years in jail for his role in causing state losses of around US$170 million (S$225 million), linked to a national electronic identity card scheme.\nThe case has shocked Indonesians, already used to large corruption scandals and has reinforced a widely held perception that their Parliament, long regarded as riddled with corruption, is a failing institution.\n\"The defendant is found guilty of conspiring to commit corruption and is sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined 500 million rupiah (S$48,000),\" Judge Yanto, the head of a panel of five judges, told the court.\nNovanto would be barred from holding public office for five years after serving his sentence and have to repay US$7.3 million he was accused of plundering, added the judge.\nIn a session that ran for more than three hours, judges read out dozens of case notes, including descriptions of where the former speaker held meetings to divvy up cash made from a mark-up on a contract for the identity card.\nCONSIDER\nNovanto showed little emotion as the judge read the verdict. He told the court he would take some time to consider whether to appeal the sentence.\nNovanto is accused of orchestrating a scheme to steal US$173 million, or almost 40 per cent of the entire budget for a government contract for the national identity card.\nNovanto, who had been implicated in five graft scandals since the 1990s but never convicted, was detained by investigators last November after repeatedly missing summonses for questioning over the case, saying he needed heart surgery.", "JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia's anti-corruption commission said on Saturday the death of a witness in a graft investigation implicating dozens of politicians will not derail its probe.\nThe Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has already named the parliamentary Speaker, Setya Novanto, as a suspect in the investigation that targets at least 37 people.\nNovanto has denied any wrongdoing in the case which dates back to 2009, and centres on allegations that sums ranging from $5,000 to $5.5 million - money generated by marking up the costs of a national electronic ID card program - were divided up in a room in parliament.\nThe witness, Yohanes Marliem, was reported by U.S. media to have died in West Hollywood on Thursday after a standoff with police involving several hostages.\nIndonesia's National Police international relations chief Saiful Maltha told Reuters on Saturday that the U.S. authorities had confirmed Marliem's death.\n\"We do not know the cause of the death yet,\" Maltha said, adding that his team was working with the FBI.\nDespite the death of the witness, KPK spokesman Febry Diansyah said the investigation would go on.\n\"We are confident with the evidence we have,\" Diansyah told Reuters on Saturday.\nIndonesian domestic newspaper Kontan on Saturday published recent quotes from Marliam saying he had feared for his safety.\nNovanto, the Speaker of the House of Representatives (DPR) and chairman of Indonesia's second-biggest political party, Golkar, was named as a suspect in the case last month.\nTensions between the KPK and parliament have festered for years and some members have suggested political motives are behind the probe.", "Indonesia Includes Homosexuality in Medical Guide of Mental Disorders\nJAKARTA – Indonesia is about to publish a medical guide where it has listed homosexuality as a mental disorder, the health ministry said Friday.\nAccording to the guide the lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals community are at risk of mental disorders owing to their sexual orientation, the Ministry’s Director of Prevention and Control for Mental Problems, Fidiansyah, told EFE.\n“The last touches are now complete and this year there will be meetings with the stakeholders,” he said.\nThe guide is based on two reports; one drafted in 2016 by the Indonesian Psychiatrists Association (PDSKJI) and the other by the Health Ministry last year.\nThe PDSKJI report says gays and bisexuals are at risk of emotional problems such as depression owing to identity crises, while transsexuals are susceptible to mental diseases.\nIt also recommended certain rights for the LGBT group, such as access to treatment and medical awareness.\nThe ministry document that EFE accessed consults other ministries, such as Religion, and concludes that homosexuality is against the ethos of the country.\nThe Indonesian parliament is currently discussing an amendment to the penal code to criminalize homosexuality in the country.\nHomosexuality is legal in Indonesia, except in the Aceh province, in Sumatra island, where the Islamic Sharia law is in force.", "JAKARTA, April 25 (Reuters) - Indonesia's disaster agency said on Wednesday that 10 people had been killed and an unknown number injured after a fire at an oil well in far western province of Aceh.\nThe disaster agency said in a statement that the fire may have been caused by pipe welding at the site.\nThe Antara state agency earlier said five people had been killed and dozens injured due to illegal drilling at the well. (Reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor Writing by Ed Davies Editing by Eric Meijer)", "JAKARTA: The speaker of Indonesia's parliament, who is being investigated for his suspected involvement in a graft scandal, has tendered his resignation, several members of the assembly said on Monday.\nA replacement for Setya Novanto as speaker is expected to be decided by his party, Golkar, at an extraordinary meeting on Dec. 19, said Dito Ganinduto, a member of parliament from Golkar.\nNovanto had not resigned as chairman of the Golkar Party, Ganinduto said.\n(Reporting by Agustinus Beo Da Costa and Bernadette Christina Munthe; Writing by Fergus Jensen)", "Najib Razak Nicky Loh/Getty Images\nNajib Razak, the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, has been arrested in a corruption investigation.\nThe former leader lost a re-election bid earlier this year after billions of dollars went missing from 1MDB, a state investment fund that he set up.\nHundreds of millions of dollars were also reportedly found in his personal bank accounts.\nNajib, 64, was arrested at his Kuala Lumpur home by anti-corruption officers on Tuesday, and is being detained overnight at the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission's headquarters in Putrajaya, south of the capital city, Channel News Asia's Melissa Goh reported.\nAdvertisement\nHe is due in a Kuala Lumpur court at 8:30 a.m. local time on Wednesday, where he will be charged, Goh added.\nPolice seized $273 million (£207 million) worth of jewelry, handbags, watches and other items from six of Najib's properties as part of the investigation last month.\nMalaysia's new prime minister, 92-year-old Mahathir Mohamad, made the 1MDB investigation a priority upon entering office in May, the Nikkei Asian Review reported.\nMahathir also said last month that there was an \"almost perfect\" case against Najib's role in the 1MDB scandal.\nAs prime minister, Najib sacked Malaysia's attorney general and anti-investigation commission chief when they attempted to investigate the scandal.\nAdvertisement\nNajib has denied allegations that he misappropriated funds ever since the 1MDB scandal emerged in 2015.", "Najib Razak, Malaysia’s former prime minister, has pleaded not guilty to charges relating to a multi-billion dollar financial scandal after he was arrested from his luxury home in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, on Tuesday.\nMr Najib, 64, was formally charged in court on Wednesday morning on three counts of criminal breach of trust and a separate charge that he abused his position to pocket $10.6 million (£8m) from SRC International, a unit of the 1Malaysia Development Fund at the heart of international fraud allegations.\nAccusations of massive corruption at the 1MDB fund, which was created by Mr Najib, were a major factor behind the electoral earthquake in May that toppled his long-ruling coalition and ushered in a reformist alliance headed by his former mentor Mahathir Mohamad, 92.\nDr Mahathir’s administration was quick to reinstate an investigation into the alleged looting of the state fund. US investigators have claimed that Mr Najib’s associates stole and laundered $4.5 billion (£3.4bn) from the fund between 2009 to 2014, and 1MDB is being probed in at least six countries for alleged money laundering and graft.\nMr Najib has always denied any wrongdoing in relation to the fund. He is now the first ex-premier to appear before a judge and to be charged, and is expected to be freed on bail later on Wednesday after the court allowed a one million ringgit (£187,500) bond.", "Yet another member of the crime-fighting Hawks has been arrested for fraud. Captain Stefanus Nicolaas van Rooi was arrested by his colleagues on Thursday‚ and appeared in the Springbok Magistrate’s Court in the Northern Cape on charges of fraud and money-laundering.\nThe commander of the Hawks Serious Anti-Corruption Unit in Mpumalanga was arrested on Monday after a probe into the alleged theft of R439,900 that was meant to be in safekeeping.\nThe acting national head of the Hawks‚ Lieutenant General Yolisa Matakata‚ was alarmed by the latest fraud bust‚ according to a statement issued by Hawks spokesperson Captain Anelisa Feni." ]

[ "Here's some sites to help you with your research." ]

[ "Daylight savings time was invented by Benjamin Franklin as a way for people to have more productive days. In the summer we \"borrow\" an hour from the morning and stick it onto the end of the day so that the long summer days are even longer.", "Farming was not the issue when we began using daylight savings time (an idea originally proposed by Benjamin Franklin) small farmers always worked from daylight to dark anyway. Not by a clock. It is urban areas with 9 to 5 workers that benefit from daylight savings time.", "I'm not real sure where New London in exactly, but I live in Mansfield, Oh. I know of one here that does, but only for glasses, the exam has to be paid up front. If you are interested still e-mail me and I can give you the details.\\nhelleonwheels@yahoo.com", "I like to half it up. If I don't find a particular detail of my life very interesting and it's not important yes I'll change it, it makes you sound more interesting which means you'll have longer conversations which is all I really care about while chatting online.", "You need to provide details, is your partner the only one working? Did you know that when the two of you were getting together?\\n\\nIf it was the money that you got together for, you can never have enough, that I assure you and you can never meet anyone who can make enough for you.\\n\\nYou may be asking this question, I am speculating, because you may have found your interest in someone else and money is only an excuse, since you are not able to find anything else -may be.\\n\\nI doubt you are interested in a detailed answer.", "Corporate greed….cheap labor….It is all about the Benjamins.\\n\\nThink of it from their view point (which I am not saying is right just to clarify) but where is it cheaper to open a factory, America or some third world country? Who do you have to pay less money to for the work they perform, where can you hire young children to perform the work because there are no employment laws to protect them?", "I realize you are talking about Layne staley's side project, and River of deceit rules. Never heard the whole album. I am listening to Feist and Breaking Benjamin.", "Send me detailed information about the services your company is offering and I can find you the customers", "I dunno. Where do I find a chat site??? I'm being serious, so could you tell me by adding details? Please?", "Benjamin Franklin actually invented a musical instrument based on this concept, which is on display at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia.\\n\\nThe frequency of the sound resonates inside the glass when you move your finger on the rim. If you have noticed, the sound varies depending on how much liquid/wine you have in the glass as well. That has to with the amount of area available for the sound wave to resonate in the glass. The sound only can resonate in the air that is in the glass - can't resonate through the liquid.", "The Philadelphia Zoo is the oldest zoo in America. It was originally conceived by Benjamin Franklin, but it wasn't chartered by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania until March 21, 1859. Its opening was delayed by the Civil War, and it finally opened on July 1, 1874.\\n\\nSo Franklin was the driver behind the zoo, but he didn't live to see it. \\n\\nToday, the William Camac Founder's Award is presented to a Friend of the Philadelphia Zoo who best exemplifies the profound generosity and enthusiasm for the Zoo embodied by Dr. William Camac, who founded the Philadelphia Zoo in 1859. \\n\\nSo, Franklin conceived of it, Camac made it happen, and the Governor of Pennsylvania at the time (William Fisher Packer) and the mayor of Philadelphia (Alexander Henry) got it chartered, so I think all share in the spotlight. However, the recognized founder is Camac.\\n\\nIn addition to being the first zoo in America, it is also the first to open a special zoo just for children.", "not sure... here is a site you can find lyrics... http://www.lyrics.com\\n\\nhard to tell... I guess u don't have more details about it...", "If I am not mistaken, Theodore Roosevelt had investment interests in Cuba and his cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt owned shared of international corporations, and had family members (Winston Churchill for one) in Western Europe.", "nope probably not..most games dont..im pretty sure about that but can u add more details to that like what time, where, and when? is there a website?", "When that happens you can click on the file that did not play, right click and get more details. This will bring you to a website where you will find information of how to get that codec you need. If you cannot find it, just use the sources provided:", "Who's policing the POLICE? The founders knew what they were doing when they set up the balance of power branches of government. Bush IS the executive branch which \"enforces the laws\" The law (fourth amendment) doesn't allow for \"illegal search and seizure\" Just another attempt to scare us into taking away our human (and constitutional)rights. Bush cannot say it's the law because I SAY SO! \"Those that give up liberty for the sake of security, deserve neither\"!!!---Benjamin Franklin", "It was Franklin D. Roosevelt. I remember this, because I did a report on him in 6th grade. I never heard about the pilot that dropped a kid on Japan.", "Polarity of electricity was specified long ago by Benjamin Frankline before there was a practical means of detecting electrons. He could have tossed a coin to specify + or -. The thought was that electricity would flow (like water) from + (high) to - (low). Unfortunately it was discovered that electrons actually flow from - to + in an external wire, but it was too late and we live with convention now. In a way it really doesn't matter as long as all circuit designers agree on the convention since we can not see electrons; unless you are designing a vacuum tube (etc.) where electrons must physically flow from a heated element that boils them off to a grounded plate that collects them. Cathode is normally the negative pole.", "I would find an attorney and go into more detail about what you wrote and see what his/her advice might be.", "Goto the URL www.apple.com in it you find details about the IPODS.\\n\\n:-(", "Not sure about the Ohio area but online you can chat at gay.com and find others who are near you with your interests.", "I would recommend you to join a networking course if you are indeed interested in it. The best is CCNA. You can find more info about CCNA at : \\nhttp://cisco.netacad.net", "LOL. I am 54 and always thought I was \"getting\" more forgetful. Until I watched my children and grandchildren and realized that we are all sometimes forgetful, regardless of the age. Worrying about it probably only makes it worse.\\n\\nI think as we get older, we have more things we are interested in, need to know, think about, worry about. I know I have the every day things, and many more interests. I can remember amazing details on things that interest me or that I find fascinating. Yet I have trouble calling my grandchildren by the wrong name or remembering a name that goes with a face.\\n\\nSpend some time with the younger generation - they are just as forgetful as we are. Anything that I need to remember, I write down. Don't apologize for anything you forget. Life is full. There is a lot to remember. Have a little compassion for yourself and don't expect to remember everything.", "Go to these websites where you can find all the details abt guatemala...\\n\\nhttp://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/gt.html\\nhttp://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107596.html", "Franklin D. ROosevelt, why? because first of all, who got us out the Great Depression? without his help i don't know where we would be at", "I can send you a detailed report about Political Issues in Costa Rica.", "There are a lot of things you've left out so it's hard to say. Where you live, where the child lives, if you are one of the biological parents, are another family member or if you are an interested party who is unrelated.\\n\\nThere are many things that need to be taken into consideration before anyone can really answer for sure.\\n\\nMy best advise would be to go on www.allexperts.com, find an attorney who deal with this matter and ask your question giving them all the detailed information they will need. This particular site is free, all the experts on this site volunteer their time.\\n\\nGood luck!", "While there are things about Russian culture I find interesting, give me the USA to live in", "I need to know ,,,Is there anyway I need to find personal loan not payday loan where I can reach out with my poor creidt history where I can find it", "I've been there and I know the confusion. My advice is don't worry about whether it is a date or not, just have a good time. Don't sweat any details that you might worry about if it was supposed to be a date. For example, if there is a third person there, that's cool. If you're interested in her, the best thing you can do is show that you can have a good time without stressing about things. \\n\\nGood luck & have fun!", "The turkey is one of the most famous birds in North America. Benjamin Franklin even wanted to make the wild turkey, not the Bald Eagle, the national bird of the United States!\\n\\nDomesticated turkeys are so popular because Americans love eating the bird on special occasions like Thanksgiving and Christmas.\\n\\nThe male turkey is called a \"tom.\"\\n\\nThe female turkey is called a \"hen.\"\\n\\nBaby turkeys are called \"poults.\"\\n\\nI hope this helps....\\n\\nDon", "I would be interested in reading about the details of daily life. What are the restaurants like? What are the bathrooms like? How many women go out without the hijab? What's a typical breakfast menu?" ]

[ "the Imperial Diet" ]

[ "declarative", "I've Had Enough", "You Had Me ''", "Annie Had a Baby", "declarative memory", "The Who by Numbers", "Betty Who", "The Who's Tommy", "who is singing", "Mary Had a Little Lamb", "Who Dat", "Dr. Who", "If My Heart Had Windows", "Who You Are", "You had an option, sir", "Never Had It So Good", "Who Is Fancy", "Who's That Girl", "If I Only Had Time ''", "Who's on First?", "declarative content clauses", "Not What I Had in Mind", "declarative programming paradigm" ]

[ "delivered in a timely manner and as described. Well packaged, good price, what else is there. I highly recommend." ]

[ "Best decaffeinated coffee !! Never bitter, does not have that tin taste so much decafe coffee has. Use less coffee so lasts longer. I have bought this coffee for many years and do not intend to change. Hard to find the decafe in the stores and Amazon price is a good buy.", "There is a light carmel/molassis flavor but it's not too strong for me. We enjoy it in tea, fruit smoothies, on hot breakfast cereals and everything we'd use sugar for. I found the best deal price wise at Country Life Natural Foods. It's good stuff! I also use pure stevia powder in food items so I need less sugar. It's sweet and natural with no calories.", "Lays Dill Pickle potato chips are delicious. I would recommend that anyone who likes a tangy chip give this brand a try, as other brands I've tried don't have a good balance of acidity and saltiness and can therefore totally overwhelm the palate.<br /><br />HOWEVER, Lays Dill Pickle potato chips are NOT so delicious that anyone should be paying $21.98 (including shipping) for JUST ONE bag of them. You can purchase the same-sized package of these at a brick-and-mortar grocery store for $3-4 with sales tax. I realize that this flavor is not available in certain regions of the country, and I realize that the point of having an Amazon store is to turn a profit, but the listed price here is nothing less than ridiculous. Shame on this seller.", "I was very excitd to get these healthy organic fruit crisps. They are delicious but after further investigation...yes...the apples are from China and Chile! We have a hard enough time in the US keeping up with organic standards much less trying to track other countries. Only by US organic !", "These mint patties are absolutely scrumptious! The chocolate coating is really good... the minty inside is a tad bit less \"gooey\" than a regular mint patty, but just as yummy. I eat 2 patties every night as a treat to myself. The only problem I can see here is that the price is much too high. I pay $1.99 a 3 oz pkg at the grocery store - that's $24 for 12 3 oz packages. But, they really are good!", "Our family loves popcorn. The Amish Country Popcorn is wonderful...tender, tasty and delightful. We love the nearly hull less kernels and the tiny size of the popped product. So good to enjoy while watching movies or even just curling up and reading a good book.", "Excellent tea for support of heart health. This herb can be taken in capsule and liquid form, but sometimes a cup of tea is more satisfying. This brand is good. It contains the entire flower. The asking price is less expensive than my local health food store. Delivery was fast.", "I was looking for popcorn with less hulls. Have been using Oroville R's microwave popcorn for years and have noticed more and more hulls which are not great for the teeth! I found the Amish country popcorn somewhat as advertised. The purple were tasty with larger kernels. However, the smaller kernels did poorly in air popper. Kernels kept flying out because of being so much smaller and lighter weight. Did like the taste and give an A+ for less hulls.", "In my opinion Twinings Irish breakfast tea is absolutely the best brewed tea around. It has a very robust flavor that is certain to wake you up. If you aren't a coffee drinker , this will become your \"coffee\" of choice. Excellent tea!! The price is also much less expensive than my local grocery store. If your looking for tea with a strong kick and excellent flavor, you gotta try this. Delicious!", "THIS Cutter Insect Repellent with Picaridin is safer and less strong odor that DEET products. It was not on retail stores this Summer (2011)in my area of the country. Amazon was the only place where I could find it. If you are faced with a dense mosquito population, pour in on legs on knees & below allowing it to run into socks. Just spraying it will often not give full saturation and bugs have a way of finding that bare spot. DEET products are available everywhere and may last longer, but read the warnings about the risk of long term or heavy dose of DEET.", "Canidae has been excellent for my dogs. My Siberian can be picky at times but they all seem to like Canidae. The company was open and informative with me.(1.800.398.1600) I'll not be feeding my dogs ANYTHING that comes out of China unless we go flat broke. Many foods(pet & people) say \"Made in America\" but most of the ingredients are from foreign countries and the food is only pressed together and packaged here. I consider this dishonest and immoral. It's also obviously legal thanks to federal policy that favors 'Free-trade/profit' over the health of American children, much less their pets. A premium food, sans fillers and trash, really is no more expensive since you feed less of it. Your dog will be healthier. Call this company and other companies and ask about their ingredients. Science diet and Purina will, for good reason, be way more evasive than Canidae.", "Nestle Nido made in Chile Ingredients, Whole milk, soy Lecithin ( emulsification properties ), Vitamin A Acetate, Vitamin D3. I did a three milk blind taste test. I mixed nonfat milk from a large country wide grocery store chain by the directions, Mixed Nestle Nido from Chile by the directions, and bought a pint of whole milk from a country wide dairy. I left the milks in the fridge over night in uncoverd identical marked glasses . This was to give them time to rest. The next day a friend blindfolded me and the test began. First a whole milk that was very good. Washed mouth and the second milk was nonfat. Easy pick taste like most nonfat powderd milk. Washed mouth. Tried third glass and was stumped. I sipped both whole milks and could tell one was fresher. I picked the fresher as the store bought and was wrong. The best was Nido from Chile. I have had two years chef prep and years cooking in the field. It is my assumption that the store bought had picked up flavor from the carton. I will keep Nestle Nido from chile as a back up and for emergency stock. I also boiled both whole milks and found the Nido performs as well as store bought. One thing to remember is to make sure the country Nido comes from does not add sugers or other flavorings to cover a bad product. Pricey but good for emergency or every day use if you through out spoiled milk.", "My dog LOVES this product and it does help keep her teeth tartar-free, BUT the stick is much thinner than in the past and my dog can now chew through one in less than 1/2 hour as compared to 2-3 days in the past. Too expensive and too dangerous as she will swallow the stick when at 4\". Company called and they had no explanation for why the sticks are thinner, so will buy the thicker braided 12\" sticks through another company on Amazon (1/2 price vs. store pricing).", "I can't say enough good things about these cherries, they are just perfect for snacking or cooking. I put them in my oatmeal and it's a wonderful change from raisins. I like them much better. The quality is great and much more reasonable price than if you purchase at your local grocery store." ]

[ "White House lawyers spent their first full day defending President Trump in his impeachment trial. They accused the Democratic House managers of wanting the Senate to redo their investigation." ]

[ "It’s only happened twice before in U.S. history. We talk about what to watch for on the eve of the president’s impeachment trial. Guests Lisa Desjardins, correspondent for PBS NewsHour. (@LisaDNews) Meridith McGraw, White House correspondent for Politico. (@meridithmcgraw) Doyle McManus, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, director of Georgetown University&#8217;s Journalism Program. (@DoyleMcManus) From The Reading List Los Angeles Times: &#8220;Column: High politics and low will be on display in impeachment drama&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;The fix is in. The jury is anything but impartial. The verdict is pretty much foreordained. &#8220;But that isn’t what this trial will be about. &#8220;The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump, expected to begin in earnest next week, is formally about a weighty constitutional question: Has Trump abused the powers of his office? &#8220;But it’s also about politics, of course. &#8220;To borrow from Clausewitz, impeachment is the continuation of politics — including election-year politics — by other means. &#8220;That’s not a scandal. It’s an inevitable part of the way impeachment, the Constitution’s only method of sanctioning a president for misconduct, works. &#8220;An impeachment trial may look like a legal proceeding, but it isn’t. It’s not in a court; it’s in the Senate, a body populated by 100 politicians. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. will preside, but he’ll act only as a referee, not a judge.&#8221; Politico: &#8220;Trump tries scripting a made-for-TV drama out of his impeachment trial&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;He scrutinizes behind-the-scenes details of his television interviews, preferring to be shot in natural light and from the right side because he likes the way his hair looks from that angle. &#8220;He cares about how the back-and-forth parrying with the White House press corps looks on TV, sometimes directing camera crews to move to the right or the left for the best shot. &#8220;He notes how his aides perform on cable shows, closely watches TV ratings — compiled each week by a staffer — and manages how official speeches and announcements will look on screen. &#8220;It’s all part of President Donald Trump merging his position as head of the executive branch with his role as executive producer of his presidency. White House aides and Trump allies are bracing for the Senate impeachment trial to put the president’s television-focused mind on full display during a memorable moment for his presidency.&#8221; PBS NewsHour: &#8220;As Booker drops out, Iowa polls show same 4 candidates atop Democratic field&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Only three weeks remain before the Iowa caucuses kick off 2020 primary voting, and the volatile race is exposing new rifts in the Democratic field. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders seem to have abandoned a longstanding truce as they jostle with former Vice President Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg at the top of the polls. And yet another candidate has dropped out. Lisa Desjardins reports.&#8221; NBC News: &#8220;Trump impeachment defense team expected to include Ken Starr, Alan Dershowitz&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;President Donald Trump&#8217;s defense team for the Senate trial is expected to include former independent counsel Ken Starr, who investigated President Bill Clinton, and defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News. &#8220;Dershowitz&#8217;s past clients include financier Jeffrey Epstein and O.J. Simpson. Also expected to join the team is Robert Ray, who succeeded Starr as Clinton special counsel, the source said. Another source familiar with the White House&#8217;s plans said Pam Bondi, former Florida attorney general, will join the team as well. &#8220;The legal team will be led by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and Trump personal lawyer Jay Sekulow. &#8220;Bondi will present during oral arguments, the source said.&#8221; The Hill: &#8220;GOP threatens to weaponize impeachment witnesses amid standoff&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Republicans are threatening to weaponize a fight on Senate impeachment witnesses amid growing concerns that moderates within their caucus could help Democrats call former national security adviser John Bolton to testify. &#8220;After weeks of pledging that they would hold a quick trial with no witnesses from either side, Republicans — from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on down — are sending public warning shots that if their GOP colleagues open the door to Democratic witnesses they’ll respond in kind, forcing votes on a slew of controversial individuals. &#8220;The pressure tactics are the latest shift in strategy as Republican leaders try to navigate the factions in their caucus, where moderates want to leave the potential for witnesses on the table and conservatives are anxious to quickly acquit President Trump.&#8221; This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "Updated at 1:20 a.m. ET Democrats are pressing the Senate to call former national security adviser John Bolton to testify in President Trump's impeachment trial following a new report that House impeachment managers describe as \"explosive.\" The New York Times reported Sunday evening that Bolton wrote in a forthcoming book that the president told him in August he wanted to continue withholding close to $400 million in military assistance to Ukraine until that country's government agreed to launch investigations of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The Times report cited accounts from multiple unnamed sources who said they had seen drafts of a manuscript from Bolton's book about his time in the White House. NPR has not seen a draft of the manuscript and cannot vouch for the accuracy of the report. Bolton's lawyer, Charles Cooper, said in an emailed statement to NPR that he had submitted a copy of the manuscript to the National Security Council on Dec. 30 to ensure that no classified information was disclosed. Cooper said his understanding was that the manuscript would not be disclosed to officials not regularly involved in the review process. \"It is clear, regrettably, from The New York Times article published today that the prepublication review process has been corrupted and that information has been disclosed by persons other than those properly involved in reviewing the manuscript,\" Cooper said. In a post-midnight tweet, Trump denied the account. \"I NEVER told John Bolton that the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens,\" he wrote. \"If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book.\" The Times' report landed as Trump's defense team prepares to argue against the president's removal in his Senate impeachment trial on Monday. Democratic House impeachment managers argue that the story bolsters their argument to have the Senate call Bolton as a witness at the trial, and to provide his notes and documents. \"The Senate trial must seek the full truth and Mr. Bolton has vital information to provide,\" the House impeachment team said in a statement. \"Americans know that a fair trial must include both the documents and witnesses blocked by the President — that starts with Mr. Bolton.\" Other senior Democrats backed the House impeachment managers' demand. \"John Bolton has the evidence,\" Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted. \"It's up to four Senate Republicans to ensure that John Bolton, Mick Mulvaney, and the others with direct knowledge of President Trump's actions testify in the Senate trial.\" House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a tweet that the Times report provides Republican senators with a choice between \"our Constitution or a cover-up.\" The House impeachment inquiry had asked Bolton to testify, but did not issue him a subpoena. Although the White House had ordered senior officials not to testify, Bolton said earlier this month that he would comply if the Senate issued a subpoena for his testimony. Bolton and his deputy Charles Kupperman had wanted a federal court to rule on whether they should follow the House request or the White House order, but the House withdrew a subpoena for Kupperman and did not pursue the matter in court. The White House and National Security Council did not respond to requests for comment from NPR.", "The Senate impeachment trial moves into a new phase on Wednesday, as senators present questions to Chief Justice John Roberts to be read before the House impeachment managers and President Trump’s legal team.  The question of whether witnesses will testify in the trial is still very much up in the air. The Senate has deposed witnesses in every impeachment trial in history. Three witnesses testified in the Clinton impeachment trial — Monica Lewinsky, Clinton confidant Vernon Jordan and White House aide Sidney Blumenthal.  Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois and the Senate minority whip, says the rules of a criminal trial and the political action of impeachment differ slightly, but both call for the presentation of evidence.  “There is a glimmer of hope that this might just turn out to be a trial. So far, it’s not even close,” he says. “What we’ve seen so far, four or five days of presentation, actually would be an opening statement at a trial. No evidence has been presented.” The Constitution calls for the admittance of evidence in an impeachment trial, which Durbin says, could sway some Republican senators when the time comes to vote on witnesses and documents.  “Evidence would clearly be documents and witnesses, and I think that’s started to weigh heavily on the minds of some Republican senators,” he says. “How will they explain that for the first time in the history of the use of the impeachment clause in the Constitution there was a so-called trial, but no witnesses showed up?” Interview Highlights On what questions Durbin plans to ask in the new phase of the trial “I have a question prepared that&#8217;s based on my work on the [Defense Subcommittee on Appropriations] and the fact that the administration was notified by the Department of Defense in August that if they did not release the funds for Ukraine&#8217;s defense, that there was possible violation of law. And secondly, it wouldn&#8217;t have been possible to release all the funds within the fiscal year. My question, obviously, to the president&#8217;s team is once the president was notified that the money was going to be diminished and there may be a violation of law, why didn&#8217;t he release it then?” On what the answer to that question might be “I&#8217;m not sure. Because they&#8217;ve suggested that the president just spontaneously decided to release the funds, that it had nothing to do with the phone call with President Zelensky and that he was determined to help Ukraine. My question raises the point within his own administration where they were warned that further delay in releasing them would diminish the funds that could actually be sent to Ukraine.”  On his opposition to a “witness trade” regarding John Bolton and Hunter Biden “This isn’t a trading opportunity for members of the Senate and the House. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a serious matter, the most serious matter under our Constitution. What we’re asking for on the Democratic side are witnesses who actually work for this president or did work for this president — people on his staff. We’re not sure what they’re going to say. They have not been deposed. We’re ready to accept whatever it may be as long as they’re under oath and tell the truth. This idea, well let’s bring in Hunter Biden, see if he’ll spice this up politically. Get down to reality here. The reality is, did that conversation with the president breach his authority in office and should it result in an impeachment?” On whether he’d accept a trade if absolutely necessary “I don’t think it’s reached that point. It’s been suggested by one senator … and let me add, there are 53 Republican senators. The way this trial is constructed, the majority of the Senate can basically make a decision on bringing a witness before us in the procedure that is followed. So if it is the intent of the Republicans to bring any members of the Biden family before this Senate, they have the votes to do it.” On reading Bolton&#8217;s book in the Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility — or SCIF “What a hoot. The notion that this is somehow classified information? In just a few weeks, John Bolton is gonna be sitting there with pen in hand autographing these books for the world to read. But we have to read them in a classified setting? What is that all about? If this manuscript is out and about — and apparently it is — then it ought to be presented to the Senate for us to review it and then call Mr. Bolton and challenge him as a witness under oath as to the truth of the statements in his book.” Lynn Menegon produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Kathleen McKenna. Samantha Raphelson adapted it for the web. This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "Former President Donald Trump's legal defense team claims the House of Representatives moved to impeach him because the Democrats are afraid of facing Trump in 2024. \"Let's understand why we are really here,\" attorney Bruce Cantor said on the Senate floor Tuesday. \"We are really here because the majority in the House of Representatives does not want to face Donald Trump as a political rival in the future.\" Trump's legal team also argued that his historic second impeachment trial in the Senate should not move forward because their client is no longer president. Castor accused Democrats of ignoring jurisdictional and due process \"in order to get to the part of the Constitution that allows removal.\" \"Why is the majority of the House of Representatives afraid of the American people?\" Cantor asked, pointing to the fact that Biden is the current occupant of the White House, not his client. \"The reason why I'm having trouble with the argument [for a trial] is the American people just spoke and they just changed administrations.\" Fellow Trump defense attorney David Schoen picked up on this theme, telling Senators that if House Democrats truly wanted to find out who was responsible for the attack on the Capitol, then they would wait for investigations to be completed. \"A great many Americans see this for exactly what it is: a chance by a group of partisan politicians seeking to eliminate Donald Trump from the American political scene and seeking to disenfranchise 74 million-plus American voters,\" Schoen said, referring to the number of votes Trump received in the 2020 election. \"They hated the results of the 2016 election and want to use this impeachment process to further their political agenda,\" Schoen said. Trump is facing a single article of impeachment, charging that he is directly responsible for inciting his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Prior to the assault on the seat of the U.S. government, Trump addressed supporters at a \"Stop the Steal\" rally. \"You'll never take back our country with weakness,\" Trump said to the crowd the same day lawmakers were working to certify President Biden's electoral victory. \"You have to show strength and you have to be strong,\" he added. House impeachment managers said the trial against Trump must continue, otherwise the Senate will create a so-called \"January exception\" precedent, which would essentially allow sitting presidents to commit impeachable acts with impunity in the final days before they leave office. The Senate ultimately voted 56-44 to allow the impeachment trial to proceed, largely along party lines. Though the Democrats control the chamber, they do not have enough votes to convict Trump. In order for that to happen, 17 Republican senators must join all Democrats to reach the required two-thirds, which is unlikely.", "The White House continues to make its case in the Senate impeachment trial. The president’s lawyers say he did nothing wrong. We’ll have the latest. Guests Jonathan Turley, a constitutional scholar. He teaches Public Interest Law at George Washington University’s School of Law. He testified as a constitutional expert in the Clinton impeachment hearings, in favor of impeachment. He represented four former U.S. Attorneys General during the Clinton impeachment litigation. (@JonathanTurley) Kate Shaw, law professor at Cardozo School of Law. Supreme Court contributor for ABC News. (@kateashaw1) From The Reading List The New York Times: &#8220;Will Trump&#8217;s Defenders Pass The Test of Legitimacy?&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;The Constitution says that what’s happening in the Senate right now is a trial. But it’s no ordinary trial: As we’re all now well aware, a Senate trial is a hybrid affair, part law and part politics. &#8220;That’s true about the enterprise as a whole, and it’s been especially true about the rhetoric each side has deployed. As the president’s team has moved into the heart of its substantive defense, the rhetorical choices its members make are significant not only for what they say about impeachment (and legal constraint more broadly) in the age of Trump but also for the meaning of the acquittal the president is likely to receive. &#8220;For their part, the House managers prosecuting the case have made their arguments in mostly legal terms — beginning with constitutional language, history and antecedents; drawing on impeachment precedent; marching through the evidence of the president’s conduct, in sometimes excruciating detail. In short, they’ve explained and defended their position that in light of the prevailing understanding of what the Constitution means, requires and prohibits, the president’s actions constituted &#8216;high crimes and misdemeanors&#8217; warranting conviction and removal.&#8221; The Washington Post: &#8220;Key GOP senators say reports on Bolton book bolster case for witnesses in impeachment trial&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Two Republican senators said Monday that new revelations from John Bolton bolstered their case for summoning witnesses in President Trump’s impeachment trial, as fresh allegations from the former White House official left Senate Republicans scrambling as they faced renewed pressure to seek new evidence. &#8220;In his forthcoming book, former national security adviser Bolton alleges that Trump directly tied the holdup of nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine to desired investigations of former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter. &#8220;The disclosure upended the Senate as the second full week of Trump’s impeachment trial began. Democrats insisted that the Senate must call the former White House official as a witness.&#8221; The New York Times: &#8220;Bolton Was Concerned That Trump Did Favors for Autocratic Leaders, Book Says&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, privately told Attorney General William P. Barr last year that he had concerns that President Trump was effectively granting personal favors to the autocratic leaders of Turkey and China, according to an unpublished manuscript by Mr. Bolton. &#8220;Mr. Barr responded by pointing to a pair of Justice Department investigations of companies in those countries and said he was worried that Mr. Trump had created the appearance that he had undue influence over what would typically be independent inquiries, according to the manuscript. Backing up his point, Mr. Barr mentioned conversations Mr. Trump had with the leaders, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and President Xi Jinping of China. &#8220;Mr. Bolton’s account underscores the fact that the unease about Mr. Trump’s seeming embrace of authoritarian leaders, long expressed by experts and his opponents, also existed among some of the senior cabinet officers entrusted by the president to carry out his foreign policy and national security agendas.&#8221; The New York Times: &#8220;Trump Tied Ukraine Aid to Inquiries He Sought, Bolton Book Says&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;President Trump told his national security adviser in August that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens, according to an unpublished manuscript by the former adviser, John R. Bolton. &#8220;The president’s statement as described by Mr. Bolton could undercut a key element of his impeachment defense: that the holdup in aid was separate from Mr. Trump’s requests that Ukraine announce investigations into his perceived enemies, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden, who had worked for a Ukrainian energy firm while his father was in office. &#8220;Mr. Bolton’s explosive account of the matter at the center of Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial, the third in American history, was included ", "Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., opened the second day of impeachment proceedings by rejecting the defense's argument that former President Donald Trump's remarks at a rally prior to the Capitol attack are protected speech under the First Amendment. Raskin said that Trump was not merely a private citizen walking down the street expressing his support for the overthrow of the federal government. The former constitutional law professor said if Trump were, his speech would be protected. As president, however, Raskin argued, Trump had a sworn duty that set him apart from every other American — to protect the Constitution. \"Look, if you're the president of the United States, you've chosen a side with your oath of office,\" Raskin said. \"If you break it, we can impeach, convict, remove and disqualify you permanently from holding any office of honor, trust or profit in the United States.\" Raskin likened what Trump did to a local fire chief who is paid to put out fires but instead orders a mob to descend on a crowded theater and set it ablaze. And then when calls for help go to the fire department, Raskin continued, Trump \"does nothing but sit back, encourage the mob to continue its rampage and watch the fire spread on TV.\" Raskin noted that the conservative Federalist Society issued a memo before the start of the impeachment trial that said in part: \"The First Amendment is no bar to the Senate convicting former President Trump and disqualifying him from holding future office.\" Raskin added that not only are Trump's words not shielded by free speech protections, but what he did on the day of the Capitol attack was the act of \"inciter in chief.\" \"When he incited insurrection on Jan. 6, he broke that oath [of office]. He violated that duty. And that's why we're here today. And that's why he has no credible constitutional defense,\" Raskin said. Trump's legal team is expected to rely heavily on a First Amendment defense. Tuesday, defense attorney Bruce Castor asked the Senate, \"This trial is about trading liberty for the security from the mob? Honestly, no. It can't be.\" \"We can't possibly be suggesting that we punish people for political speech in this country,\" Castor said. As NPR's legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reported on Tuesday, some legal scholars argue that the question is irrelevant to an impeachment trial. \"The First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech simply doesn't apply to impeachment,\" Peter Keisler, a former acting attorney general in George W. Bush's administration, says. \"This isn't a criminal prosecution which seeks to render someone's speech illegal.\" Trump is entitled to hold whatever opinions he wants and to express them, Keisler says. \"But he is not entitled to assert a First Amendment defense against removal or disqualification from office ... because the Founders were in particular worried about ... the ways in which demagogues could become tyrants.\"", "Updated at 11:54 a.m. ET The Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump will feature evidence \"that nobody has seen before,\" House Democrats say. The trial gets under way Tuesday with up to four hours of arguments about the constitutionality of the Senate weighing whether to convict a former president no longer in office. In a briefing for reporters ahead of the trial, senior aides on the House impeachment managers team said they plan to use \"all the evidence available in all the forms, including evidence that nobody has seen before.\" \"It's not about politics,\" one aide said. \"This is about the very serious issue of holding President Trump accountable.\" The House impeached Trump for a second time last month, voting in favor of one article that charged that Trump incited the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters that resulted in the deaths of five people, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer. The attack was documented in real time by rioters as well as lawmakers and journalists who were at the Capitol as it unfolded. Trump's defense against the trial itself Trump's defense lawyers are expected to argue that the Senate has no constitutional authority to try Trump now that he is out of office. The House aides say that argument will be \"sliced to shreds\" by the managers, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md. \"Trump incited the violence and refused to intervene,\" said another aide. \"He must be held accountable. A president must be held accountable for every day in office, from beginning to end, there cannot be a January exception.\" In a response to Trump's pretrial brief submitted Monday, the House managers argue that the former president has \"no good defense\" of his incitement of an insurrection. Instead, the managers claim, \"He tries to shift the blame onto his supporters, and he invokes a set of flawed legal theories that would allow Presidents to incite violence and overturn the democratic process without fear of consequences.\" The managers say the defense team's claim that the Senate doesn't have jurisdiction to hold a trial is a \"discredited argument\" and \"has been rejected by scholars across the political spectrum.\" Daniel Goldman, lead counsel for House Democrats during the first impeachment trial, said if the impeachment trial were a criminal case, trying Trump now is like an indictment before the statute of limitations. \"So even if the trial happens afterwards, the original charges happened while he was in office. So both in terms of practicality and common sense, as well as the text of the Constitution, it's a losing argument, but it is something that the Trump defense team and some of the Republican senators can latch onto so that they don't actually have to address the conduct at issue,\" Goldman told NPR. It will take a simple majority to either dismiss or allow the Senate trial to proceed after Tuesday's debate. But in order to convict Trump, it will take 67 votes, meaning at least 17 GOP senators will have to go along with all of the Democratic caucus, a bar that they are unlikely to cross. NPR congressional reporter Claudia Grisales contributed to this report.", "House impeachment managers will present new evidence during Wednesday's session of the Senate impeachment trial, including video footage from Capitol security cameras, senior aides to the team said ahead of the proceedings. The aides said the new video footage hasn't been seen publicly before and will provide new insight into the extreme violence at the Capitol the day of the insurrection. \"You'll see footage you have never seen before that shows a view of the Capitol that is quite extraordinary, the view of the attack that has never been public before, which you will see for the first time starting today,\" one of the aides said in a call with reporters. The Senate impeachment trial began Tuesday with arguments on the constitutionality of the proceedings against former President Donald Trump. The Senate voted to go forward with the trial on a largely partisan vote of 56-44 with six Republicans breaking with their colleagues to join Democrats. The Senate trial now moves on to the next phase as impeachment managers will have up to 16 hours over two days to make their case, followed by the defense team. The proceedings will begin again at noon on Wednesday (watch the arguments live here). Aides said they expect to put on a case that will be devastating to Trump and his defense team. \"You should expect a compelling presentation from manager after manager. Like a trial, the case will build. It will build, each piece building on the other, the beginning, a middle and an end and today will be the beginning,\" an aide said. Trump's defense team argued on Tuesday that the impeachment trial is unconstitutional now that Trump is no longer in office (though a majority of senators voted it was). It also maintains that his speech to supporters ahead of the riot is protected free speech and that he did not directly encourage violence, as the prosecution argues. The defense lawyers' opening statements are expected to begin on Friday. Wednesday's opening statement from the prosecution is equally divided between all the managers with each presenting a different section. If all of the managers are not heard from on the first day, they will be by the end of the second, an aide said. They'll aim to show how Trump filled his words with meaning and how he attracted people with violent backgrounds to the Capitol ahead of the insurrection. Thursday's presentations will be largely focused on the toll the insurrection took and presenting more details on Trump's alleged role in \"assembling, inflaming the insurrections.\" The aides declined to say whether they will call for witnesses, and if so, who. However, they argued that they will have an impact on the Senate's jurors in the coming days. \"We weren't kidding when we said that you were going to see a devastating case against President Trump just in this opening presentation,\" another aide said.", "What&#8217;s next for the impeachment inquiry? We&#8217;ll discuss the latest developments and look at new evidence still surfacing. Guests John Bresnahan, congressional bureau chief for Politico. (@BresPolitico) Miriam Elder, senior political reporter for BuzzFeed News, and former Russia correspondent for The Guardian. (@MiriamElder) Andrew S. Weiss, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he oversees research on Russia and Eurasia. Former director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council. (@andrewsweiss) From The Reading List Politico: &#8220;House Dems release new impeachment evidence related to indicted Giuliani associate&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;The House Intelligence Committee released new evidence on Tuesday related to the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, including information turned over by Lev Parnas, an indicted former associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. &#8220;The release, which reflects the unfinished nature of the House’s impeachment inquiry, comes ahead of an expected House vote on Wednesday to formally send the impeachment articles to the Senate for a trial. &#8220;&#8216;Despite unprecedented obstruction by the president, the committee continues to receive and review potentially relevant evidence and will make supplemental transmittals,&#8217; Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) wrote Tuesday to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), whose panel is responsible for compiling the complete record of the investigation ahead of the Senate’s trial. &#8220;The material released on Tuesday contains several handwritten notes, emails, encrypted messages, and other documents that underscore the close relationship between Parnas and Giuliani, who was actively pursuing an effort last year to push the Ukrainian government to announce investigations targeting Trump’s political rivals. The documents also complicate one of Trump’s oft-stated defenses of his actions toward Ukraine.&#8221; USA Today: &#8220;Who are the 7 impeachment managers selected for the Senate trial of President Donald Trump?&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;House Speaker Nancy Pelosi named seven impeachment managers Wednesday, shortly before a draft resolution appointing them will be introduced to the House of Representatives. &#8220;&#8216;It is their responsibility to present the very strong case for the president’s impeachment and removal,&#8217; Pelosi said. &#8216;The impeachment managers represent the patriotism, pluralism and vibrancy of America.&#8217; &#8220;The managers,all members of the House, will serve in a role similar to prosecutors once the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump begins in the Senate on Tuesday. They are tasked with presenting House Democrats&#8217; case in the trial, which will determine whether Trump should be convicted and removed from office. Removal requires a two-thirds majority, or 67 votes in the GOP-majority Senate. &#8220;Unlike the group of 13 Republicans who managed their case against President Bill Clinton, who were all white men, this group of seven managers consists of three women and four men. Two are members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and one is a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. &#8220;The House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump on Dec. 18 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Democrats allege Trump abused his power by pressuring the government of Ukraine to open politically motivated investigations and obstructed Congress during its investigation by withholding witnesses and documents.&#8221; Bloomberg: &#8220;Yovanovitch Lawyer Calls Texts ‘Disturbing’: Impeachment Update&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she’ll send the articles of impeachment against Donald Trump to the Senate this week to begin the president’s trial. Democrats tried to pressure Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to allow a vote to call witnesses at the outset, but he said he plans to stick to the Clinton impeachment trial structure, which would put any decision on witnesses off until after opening arguments and the White House‘s defense. &#8220;Here are the latest developments: &#8220;Yovanovitch Lawyer Seeks Parnas Texts Probe (10:50 p.m.) A lawyer for Marie Yovanovitch, the ousted U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, called for an investigation after documents released on Tuesday suggested that she had been under surveillance in Ukraine. &#8220;&#8216;Needless to say, the notion that American citizens and others were monitoring Ambassador Yovanovitch’s movements for unknown purposes is disturbing,&#8217; the lawyer, Lawrence Robbins, said on Tuesday night. &#8216;We trust that the appropriate authorities will conduct an investigation to determine what happened.&#8217; &#8220;The House committees that led Trump’s impeachment released telephone records and other new material from Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s ", "Updated at 5:30 p.m. House Democrats and President Trump's defense team made their final arguments in the Senate impeachment trial before lawmakers vote later this week on whether to remove Trump from office. Both sides presented opposing versions of the president's handling of aid for Ukraine last summer and the impeachment proceedings so far, before ultimately arriving at divergent conclusions. With Trump's acquittal all but certain, lead impeachment manager, Adam Schiff, used his remarks to push back against those lawmakers who argue that Trump's alleged actions may be inappropriate, but do not rise to the level of impeachment. \"What are the odds that (Trump) will continue trying to cheat? I will tell you: 100 percent,\" Schiff said. \"If you have found him guilty and you do not remove him from office, he will continue trying to cheat in the election, until he succeeds.\" The impeachment trial session is adjourned until Wednesday, but senators are expected to speak on the floor on impeachment Monday and Tuesday. After the closing arguments wrapped, at least one Democrat — Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia — said he remained undecided on whether to vote to convict Trump. Manchin is one of a handful of Democrats who could potentially oppose removal. Manchin floated the idea of censuring Trump for his conduct, but that idea is unlikely to gain much traction in the Republican-controlled Senate. Trump has repeatedly said that the abuse of power and obstruction of Congress impeachment charges against him are a politically motivated attempt to discredit his presidency — a charge he tweeted again on Monday during the House managers' remarks. The defense team argued Monday that Trump did not attempt to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals by holding up military aid last summer. The lawyers also blasted the House impeachment process, saying that Democrats did not follow the \"rules\" and were unfair to the president. In sweeping remarks, Trump's lawyer Ken Starr quoted Martin Luther King and talked about freedom and justice. Starr is the former independent counsel whose investigation led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. \"The House of Representatives does under our Constitution enjoy the sole power of impeachment. No one has disputed that fact. They've got the power. But, that does not mean that anything goes,\" Starr said. \"It doesn't mean that the House cannot be called into account.\" Trump's personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said that impeachment had always been the endgame for Democrats. He played a video of various Democrats calling for impeachment since Trump's election. After Monday's session, the Senate adjourned. The impeachment proceedings will begin again at 4 p.m. ET Wednesday, when senators are set to take a formal vote on the articles of impeachment. Trump's acquittal is nearly guaranteed, as 20 Republicans would have to join the Democratic caucus to vote against the president. The lawyers' final pitches to senators on Monday followed a vote Friday to block witnesses and the introduction of new evidence into the trial. Democrats had urged Republicans to consider bringing witnesses and evidence into the trial after news reports about bombshell allegations contained in a manuscript of former national security adviser John Bolton's forthcoming book. However, only two Republican senators joined Democrats, and the effort was defeated. Schiff said Sunday that Democrats are considering issuing a subpoena to sit Bolton down in front of investigators in the House, where the impeachment inquiry is still open. \"Whether it's in testimony before the House, or it's in his book, or it's in one form or another, the truth will come out,\" Schiff said on CBS' Face the Nation. Prior to the House impeaching Trump, Democrats requested that Bolton appear before House lawmakers, but he refused, citing the White House's orders that former officials close to Trump not cooperate with impeachment investigators. House lawmakers said they did not subpoena Bolton then in order to avoid a drawn-out court battle.", "Updated on Friday at 2 p.m. ET Former President Donald Trump made history when he became the first president to be impeached twice by the House of Representatives. Roughly a year ago, the Senate acquitted Trump on two articles — abuse of power and obstruction. This time, he faces one article approved by the House that argues he incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the day that Congress was required by the Constitution to count and certify the electoral votes in the 2020 election. Here's how the trial is expected to work In a proceeding like this, House impeachment managers act as the prosecution, making their case of Trump's culpability to the senators, who act as jurors. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., selected nine Democrats to serve as managers. Trump has his own defense lawyers. On Jan. 25, the House managers delivered the article of impeachment to the Senate, which triggered the start of a trial. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed last month to give the former president's defense team some time to prepare and established a schedule for filing pretrial briefs. The managers submitted their 80-page brief on Feb. 2 and the former president's defense team filed its own pretrial brief on Monday. Schumer and McConnell agreed to a resolution that sets up the structure of the trial. Schumer said it will ensure a \"fair and honest\" process. In a statement sent by Trump's office Monday, Trump's legal team said it was pleased there was bipartisan support on structuring the trial. \"This process will provide us with an opportunity to explain to Senators why it is absurd and unconstitutional to hold an impeachment trial against a private citizen,\" it read. What is the timing for the trial? On Tuesday, impeachment managers and the president's counsel had up to four hours equally divided to debate the constitutionality of the trial. After the arguments, the Senate voted it had the jurisdiction to try the former president with a vote of 56 to 44, with six Republicans breaking with their party to join Democrats. The threshold to pass was a simple majority of 51 votes. The trial proceeded at noon ET Wednesday with up to 16 hours for each side — or up to eight hours over two days — to present its case. However, both sides needed less than that by week's end, with managers taking two days but about five hours short of their allotted time and Trump's lawyers using only about three hours of their time on Friday. Now that the presentations are done, senators have up to four hours to question both sides. Then there will be four hours divided equally between the parties for arguments on whether the Senate will consider motions to subpoena witnesses and documents, if requested by the managers. The impeachment managers have already said that the senators themselves, who were sitting in the chamber the day of the Jan. 6 attack, are witnesses. Most lawmakers on both sides say adding witness testimony would prolong the trial unnecessarily. There will be up to four hours equally divided for closing arguments, along with deliberation time if requested by the senators before the vote takes place. Who is defending Trump? David Schoen and Bruce Castor Jr. were named as Trump's lawyers after five members of his defense team reportedly left a little more than a week before the trial. Michael van der Veen was also later brought in. Castor is the former county commissioner and former district attorney for Montgomery County, Pa. He's known, in part, for a case that he didn't pursue, declining in 2005 to prosecute Bill Cosby. Schoen has worked briefly as counsel for Trump's longtime friend Roger Stone. He is also linked to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender. In 2019, Schoen told the Atlanta Jewish Times that he met with Epstein in prison days before Epstein hanged himself. Van der Veen, an attorney specializing in personal injury and criminal defense, has the lowest public profile of the team but took up a significant portion of defense time on Friday. Will Trump testify? Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the lead impeachment manager, sent a letter to Trump on Feb. 4 inviting the former president to testify under oath. Trump's attorneys responded by calling the request a \"public relations stunt.\" Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, told NPR's Domenico Montanaro that Trump would not testify, labeling the trial an \"unconstitutional proceeding.\" A year ago, Trump also declined to participate personally in his first impeachment proceedings. What are the two sides arguing? In their brief, House managers said Trump is \"singularly responsible\" for the violence that ensued at the Capitol after rallying his supporters. \"To protect our democracy and national security — and to deter any future President who would consider provoking violence in pursuit of power — the Senate should convict President Trump and disqualify him from futur", "Updated at 6:58 p.m. ET Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the sole article of impeachment for incitement to insurrection against former President Donald Trump will be delivered to the Senate on Monday and a trial against the Republican will begin the week of Feb. 8. \"The Senate will conduct a trial on the impeachment of Donald Trump,\" Schumer said Friday on the Senate floor. \"It will be a fair trial. But make no mistake, there will be a trial.\" House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., confirmed that the article would be transmitted to the Senate shortly before 7 p.m. ET Monday. Once the article is transmitted, the trial process begins, with notices sent and briefs requested of the two sides. In a statement, Doug Andres, a spokesman for Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said the Kentucky Republican \"is glad that Leader Schumer agreed to Republicans' request for additional time during the pre-trial phase.\" \"Republicans set out to ensure the Senate's next steps will respect former President Trump's rights and due process, the institution of the Senate, and the office of the presidency. That goal has been achieved,\" Andres said. \"This is a win for due process and fairness.\" McConnell had earlier said he had requested that Democrats wait until Jan. 28 to allow Trump's legal team more time to prepare and to give the Senate more floor time before the trial consumes its calendar. He had criticized the Democrats' desire to move ahead with the process on a quicker timeline. \"This impeachment began with an unprecedentedly fast and minimal process in the House,\" McConnell said Friday on the Senate floor. \"The sequel cannot be an insufficient Senate process that denies former President Trump his due process or damages the Senate or the presidency itself.\" Per McConnell's office, here is the timeline for how the process will work: Monday: Exhibition of article. Tuesday: Swearing-in of senators, issuance of summons. Feb. 2: • Due date for Trump's answer to article.• Due date for House's pretrial brief. Feb. 8: • Due date for Trump's pretrial brief.• Due date for House's replication to answer. Feb. 9: Due date for House's pretrial rebuttal brief. (Trial can begin.) Senate impeachment rules technically require all 100 senators to be present on the Senate floor and seated in their assigned seats six days a week until the trial is complete. President Biden has asked that the Senate reach an agreement to split its time so that lawmakers can also consider his Cabinet nominees and major legislation such as a coronavirus relief package. Republicans, such as Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, have bluntly rejected that idea. \"It's not going to happen,\" Cornyn told a pool of reporters in the Capitol. \"It would take all 100 senators.\" Some Republicans are publicly insisting it is unconstitutional to continue impeachment proceedings for a president who has already left office. Schumer rejected that argument on Friday. \"It makes no sense whatsoever that a president, or any official, could commit a heinous crime against our country and then be permitted to resign in order to avoid accountability and a vote to disbar them from future office,\" Schumer said. \"It makes no sense.\" Separately, Jason Miller, a political aide to Trump, tweeted Thursday that Butch Bowers, a South Carolina defense attorney, has joined the former president's defense team. It's unclear who else will be part of that team. Last week, the House voted to impeach Trump over his role in provoking the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.", "Updated at 6:55 p.m. ET Former President Donald Trump's legal team concluded its defense on Friday, arguing that the impeachment proceedings were \"an act of political vengeance\" as well as \"a politically motivated witch hunt.\" Bruce Castor, David Schoen and Michael van der Veen each took turns addressing the Senate chamber to characterizing Trump as a staunch supporter of law and order, not someone who incited the chaos at the Capitol. Trump's attorneys had up to 16 hours over the course of two days to push back on House impeachment managers case that Trump should be convicted and barred from running for future office for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. In the end, the defense team wrapped their case in about three hours. The impeachment managers had used about 10 hours over two days. Later Friday the senators, who are serving as jurors, posed questions to both the House Democrats prosecuting the case against Trump and the ex-president's legal team. The current timeline makes it all the more likely that Trump's historic second impeachment trial could be concluded as early as Saturday. After questions, there remains the option for managers to request a debate on witnesses followed by a four-hour window for closing arguments before the final vote on whether to convict Trump. Attacking the process Schoen said the Democrats case was driven by \"political opportunism\" and that it skipped basic norms of due process and fairness, though impeachment trials are not equivalent to criminal trials. \"The rush to judgement for a snap impeachment in this case was just one example of the denial of due process,\" Schoen told the Senate chamber. Schoen also claimed Trump's legal team was never given an opportunity to \"test the integrity of the evidence offered against Donald J. Trump seeking to bar him from ever holding public office again.\" The rules of the Senate trial were agreed to by both party leaders and voted on by the chamber earlier in the week. The protected speech defense The legal team also argued that Trump's rhetoric, including remarks at a rally before the siege on the building where lawmakers were voting to certify Joe Biden's electoral victory, was protected by the First Amendment. Defense attorney van der Veen asked senators if they wanted to create a precedent of trying to determine the meaning and intent of a president's speech. \"Will that allow and maybe encourage a majority party to weaponize the awesome power of impeachment against the minority to suppress a point of view?\" van der Veen asked. Trump lawyers then played video of Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of using variations of the word \"fight\" in interviews and campaign speeches. It was an attempt to show Democrats as being hypocritical about Trump's language. He noted he was not showing the video of Democrats to condone Trump's words nor was it about \"what-about-ism.\" Instead, he said, the video was about driving home the point that all political speech is protected speech. The managers have argued that incitement is not protected speech. Trump, they claim, knew his rhetoric in particular would incite violence and that he had a history of condoning violent acts. Democrats argued that Trump helped organize the rally that preceded the attack and then urged his supporters to overrun the Capitol. A question of intent Trump lawyers framed the impeachment effort as a highly partisan attack that was really about Democrats' disdain for the former president. They accused the House members of relying on flimsy reports, misleadingly editing video and even manipulating evidence in their presentation — including an image of a tweet that inaccurately showed a validated check mark next to a username. A senior aide for the House impeachment managers pushed on allegations, noting that Trump's lawyers repeatedly showed slices of video clips during their arguments. While the aide acknowledged one screenshot \"accidently had a blue verification checkmark\" the substance of the slide was \"entirely accurate.\" The defense argued that Democrats are trying to blame Trump for the violent actions of groups that preplanned the attack on the seat of government. \"Hatred is at the heart of the House managers frivolous attempt to blame Donald Trump for the criminal acts of the rioters based on double-hearsay statements of fringe right-wing groups based on no real evidence other than rank speculation,\" van der Veen said.", "Updated on Jan. 17 at 9:30 p.m. ET President Trump has picked some high-wattage lawyers to round out his defense team for the Senate impeachment trial — a group of attorneys who are as comfortable in front of the television cameras as they are in courtrooms. Ken Starr, a Fox news commentator whose special counsel investigations led to President Bill Clinton's impeachment, will join the team. Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz also will help deliver opening arguments. The team will be led by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow, a private attorney who represented Trump in the Russia investigation. Here are more details about the team. Pat Cipollone Cipollone played a key role in the House impeachment inquiry, writing aggressive letters to House investigators to deny congressional subpoenas. He mainly stayed out of public view, but he will now take a more prominent role. Cipollone served as an outside adviser during special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump picked him to replace Don McGahn as White House counsel in October 2018. Two of his deputies — Pat Philbin and Mike Purpura — will also play a role. Jay Sekulow Sekulow is a personal attorney to Trump. He was a key player in the president's defense during the two-year Mueller investigation. \"He's probably the best constitutional lawyer who will be participating,\" said Ty Cobb, a former White House lawyer who worked closely with Sekulow on the White House response to the Russia investigation. Sekulow, the chief counsel for the firm American Center for Law and Justice, has also represented Trump on other matters, including the fight over the president's tax returns. He is known for his advocacy on religious liberty issues. \"As the president's private counsel, since I've been involved in all of these inquiries since the beginning, we thought it was then appropriate,\" said Sekulow of joining the impeachment defense. Ken Starr Starr is the former independent counsel whose investigation of Clinton led to the president's impeachment. Starr's probe focused on an affair between the president and White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Shortly after the news broke that Starr would join Trump's team, Lewinsky tweeted her reaction: \"this is definitely an 'are you f***ing kidding me?' kinda day,\" she wrote. A former solicitor general, Starr has argued 36 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a biography on his law firm's website. Alan Dershowitz Dershowitz is a Harvard Law professor emeritus known for defending celebrities like O.J. Simpson and Mike Tyson. For the impeachment trial, he said his role will be limited to constitutional arguments. \"I will not be involved in arguing the facts, nor will I be part of the defense team in the sense of strategy on the facts,\" he told All Things Considered's Mary Louise Kelly on Friday. Dershowitz told Here & Now earlier this month that he believes Trump has not committed an impeachable offense. \"I'm not opposed to impeachment, but I strongly oppose impeachment on grounds like obstruction of Congress or abuse of power,\" he said. \"Those are not in the Constitution, and the framers would never have accepted that in the Constitution.\" Dershowitz has recently come under scrutiny for representing accused child-sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who authorities say killed himself in prison while awaiting trial. One of Epstein's accusers has said Dershowitz abused her, too — allegations that Dershowitz denies. Robert Ray Ray is a prosecutor and former head of the Office of the Independent Counsel. He is known for the 237-page report he wrote on Clinton and Lewinsky. Now a white-collar criminal defense lawyer, Ray also makes frequent television appearances. Jane Raskin Raskin is a former federal prosecutor and veteran defense lawyer from the Miami area. She and her husband worked with Sekulow and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani during the Mueller probe. She has worked on many high-profile white-collar cases, including federal immigration agents suspected of extorting money from drug kingpins, reputed members of the mob and a contractor tied to the 1996 ValuJet plane crash in the Everglades. Eric Herschmann Herschmann is a partner at New York law firm Kasowitz, Benson, Torres. That firm is led by Marc Kasowitz, who represented Trump before he became president, and was briefly Trump's lawyer for the Russia probe. Pam Bondi Bondi is the former Florida attorney general whom Trump originally picked to help with White House communications during the House impeachment inquiry hearings. Now, she will move to join the defense team. Bondi is a regular guest on Fox News and longtime Trump supporter who endorsed him during the 2016 primaries. Claudia Grisales contributed to this report.", "When President Trump's defense team delivers its opening statement in the Senate impeachment trial next week, famed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz will have a starring role. But in an interview with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly on Friday, he sought to make clear that his involvement is limited to arguing that the two articles of impeachment do not satisfy the constitutional criteria for removing the president from office. \"I will not be involved in arguing the facts, nor will I be part of the defense team in the sense of strategy on the facts. My role is limited. I am doing precisely the same thing I would be doing had Hillary Clinton — who I voted for — been elected president and had the Republicans try to impeach her,\" Dershowitz told All Things Considered. He joins Ken Starr, Robert Ray, Jane Raskin and Pam Bondi on a team led by his private attorney Jay Sekulow and White House counsel Pat Cipollone. Dershowitz, who consulted with former President Bill Clinton's defense during his impeachment trial, said he would not weigh in on the issue of whether witnesses should be allowed in the Senate trial — an issue being pushed by Democrats and so far resisted by Republicans. Dershowitz often defends Trump on television, and wrote a book in 2018 called The Case Against Impeaching Trump. He described himself as a liberal Democrat who doesn't agree with Trump's policies on immigration, health care, abortion and other issues. \"But I have never allowed partisanship or politics or my own personal views to intrude into principled decisions about what I will represent, who I will represent, what constitutional arguments I would make,\" he said. One of his clients was convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who authorities say killed himself in prison last year where he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. One of Epstein's accusers has alleged she was forced to have sex with Dershowitz when she was underage — a charge that Dershowitz has denied. He and his accuser are suing each other for defamation. Dershowitz said he flagged the issue to Trump and his defense team, who said \"that it wouldn't influence the decision and that they're fully aware of the false accusations against me and they're fully aware of the role I played.\" \"As Jeffrey Epstein's lawyer and as O.J. Simpson's lawyer and as the lawyer for 250 people over a long, long, long career ... nobody who's an experienced lawyer comes on a blank slate,\" he said.", "The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump will move forward after the Senate voted Tuesday that the trial of a former president is constitutional. Trump was impeached by the House last month on a charge of inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The Senate vote on Tuesday was 56-44, with six Republicans joining all 50 members of the Democratic caucus. The Republicans who voted for the trial's constitutionality were Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Cassidy's vote is notable because he was the only senator to switch sides from an early procedural vote on the trial's constitutionality. The Louisiana Republican told Capitol Hill reporters that he thought Trump's legal team did \"a terrible job\" on Tuesday. The trial will begin its next phase on Wednesday at noon ET. Each side — House impeachment managers, followed by Trump's defense team — will have up to 16 hours over two days to make its case for conviction or acquittal. Here's a look at what happened on Day 1. It started with a video House impeachment managers began by showing members of the Senate a graphic video that walked through the events that took place on Jan. 6, including Trump's comment to supporters ahead of the riot that \"we will stop the steal,\" referencing his baseless claims of election fraud. The video documents the cascading events of the day, including Trump supporters erecting a makeshift gallows with a noose, breaching the Capitol, chanting, \"No Trump, no peace\" and using American flags to break the building's windows — and a police officer screaming in pain as he was attacked. Interspersed throughout the disturbing footage were videos and tweets from Trump that day, including his comment to supporters to \"go home. We love you. You're very special.\" After the video, the lead impeachment manager, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told senators that Trump's actions constitute high crimes and misdemeanors. \"If that's not an impeachable offense, then there is no such thing,\" Raskin said. Democrats' argument Ahead of the trial, Democrats previewed that their argument would be a visceral one, based largely off public evidence. The video set the tone for that strategy, immediately taking lawmakers who experienced the attack back to the events of that day. House managers also addressed scholarly interpretations of the Constitution, arguing there is consensus among legal experts that a trial of a former president is, in fact, constitutional. Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, dismissed claims that you can try a president only while the president is in office. \"Their argument is that if you commit an impeachable offense in your last few weeks in office, you do it with constitutional impunity,\" he said. \"You get away with it.\" He called this the \"January exception\" to impeachment. Democrats ended their arguments for the day on an emotional appeal from Raskin. He tearfully recounted his family's experience during the attack, in which he was separated from his 24-year-old daughter and son-in-law. \"They thought they were going to die,\" he said. Raskin said the deadly events on that day \"cannot be the future of America.\" Defense strategy Trump's lawyers offered an at-times-rambling defense of the former president that was multipronged: that the trial itself is unconstitutional, that Trump's comments about the election are protected under the First Amendment and that Trump was not responsible for inciting the mob that breached the Capitol. Bruce Castor, one of Trump's attorneys, delivered a meandering and long-winded opening argument, saying that the effort to try Trump is a partisan maneuver that could come back to haunt Democrats. \"The Republicans might regain the House in two years,\" he said, alleging there would be pressure for the GOP to respond with further impeachments. \"The political pendulum will shift one day,\" Castor said. \"And partisan impeachments will become commonplace.\" Another Trump attorney, David Schoen, spoke at length about constitutional issues, trying to make the case that the Senate does not have jurisdiction to try \"private citizen\" Trump. And he played his own video montage of Democrats over the years calling for Trump's impeachment and argued the trial will only further divide America.", "House impeachment manager Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., directly rebutted one of the Trump defense team's key claims during his arguments on Day 3 of the Senate impeachment trial: that the trial is politically motivated by Democrats who are concerned about running against Trump in 2024. On Tuesday, Trump lawyer Bruce Castor made the argument: \"We are really here because the majority of the House of Representatives does not want to face Donald Trump as a political rival in the future.\" But Lieu pushed back on Thursday: \"You know, I'm not afraid of Donald Trump running again in four years. I'm afraid he's going to run again and lose, because he can do this [insurrectionary incitement] again.\" He said Trump spent months \"inflaming his supporters\" and spreading the lie that the Nov. 3 election was stolen from them. \"No one is saying here that President Trump cannot contest the election. Of course he can,\" Lieu said. \"But what President Trump did, as his former chief of staff explained, was different. It was dishonorable, it was un-American and it resulted in fatalities.\" (Lieu was referencing a CNN interview with Trump's former chief of staff John Kelly who said: \"What happened on Capitol Hill yesterday is a direct result of his poisoning the minds of people with the lies and the frauds.\") Lieu claimed that in the aftermath of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Trump showed no remorse, which Lieu called an \"important factor\" in impeachment. \"Because impeachment, conviction and disqualification [from office] is not just about the past. It's about the future,\" he said. \"It's making sure that no future official, no future president does the same exact thing President Trump does.\" Some Senate Republicans have argued it's time to move on now that Trump is no longer president and impeachment serves no purpose. But House managers are making the case that impeachment is not only about holding Trump accountable but also preventing future attacks on democracy. Lieu noted that more than a dozen White House officials resigned following the events of Jan. 6, citing distress over the attack. He presented comments from various Republicans condemning Trump for provoking the attack on the Capitol, statements that undercut the defense team's claim that the trial is a partisan exercise. He entreated the Senate to \"make absolutely clear how we as a Congress, and as a nation, feel about what Donald Trump did by convicting him,\" he said, \"and to deter future presidents who do not like the outcome of a national election from believing they can follow in President Trump's footsteps.\"", "Updated at 3:49 p.m. ET House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., says she plans to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate next week, despite her ongoing concerns over how Republicans plan to conduct the Senate trial. Pelosi plans to move ahead by transmitting the articles and naming impeachment managers who will present the House case in the Senate trial. She said in a letter to House Democrats that she would consult with the caucus on Tuesday about next steps. \"In an impeachment trial, every Senator takes an oath to 'do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws.' Every Senator now faces a choice: to be loyal to the President or the Constitution,\" Pelosi said in the letter. Asked by reporters on Capitol Hill whether she thought the Senate trial would be \"fair,\" she said no. Before opening arguments, the Senate still needs to pass a resolution on the trial rules and send a summons to President Trump. The White House would then respond to the summons, paving the way for the opening of the public trial. The president's legal team was still taking shape in recent days. Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters Friday that White House counsel Pat Cipollone will take the lead, with two deputies from the counsel's office and Trump's private attorney Jay Sekulow also taking part. \"We're ready for it,\" Conway said of a Senate trial. \"And our defense team will go on offense also. This will be our first and best chance to lay out the president's case as well.\" Sekulow, who led Trump's defense in the Russia investigation, spent all day Friday at the White House, according to a person familiar with his schedule. It's not clear who else will be part of Trump's impeachment defense team, but during the Clinton impeachment, the president was represented by a large team that included both White House lawyers and private attorneys. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has so far refused to reveal the details of how he plans to manage the trial, including how long it will take to start the trial after Pelosi releases the articles. McConnell has been working closely with Cipollone and other White House staffers on trial strategy and met with Trump earlier this week. McConnell also announced earlier this week that Senate Republicans have the votes to approve rules for the trial without the help of Democrats, but he gave few specifics about what those rules would include. McConnell has said he plans to follow the general outline established in the 1999 trial of President Bill Clinton. Those rules, which were approved unanimously in the Senate, gave the House impeachment managers and the president's lawyers each 24 hours of floor time to argue their case. Senators then had 16 hours to ask questions — all before they could vote on calling new witnesses or submitting new evidence into the record. \"The Senate has a unanimous bipartisan precedent for when to handle midtrial questions such as witnesses — in the middle of the trial,\" McConnell said Monday. \"That was good enough for President Clinton, so it ought to be good enough for President Trump. Fair is fair.\" Democrats say the Clinton comparison does not apply to Trump. At the time, senators were considering re-calling witnesses who had already testified in the House. Democrats now want to call four witnesses, including former national security adviser John Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, whom the White House blocked from participating in the House investigation. Pelosi rejects that argument. \"Feebly, feebly, the majority leader has said this is just like Clinton,\" Pelosi told reporters on Thursday. \"It's exactly not like Clinton in that he won't do a bipartisan agreement on how to proceed. So, that's very important. But it's not incidental to say but for the documentation and witnesses.\" Some Republicans, like Sen. Susan Collins, have suggested that they may be open to calling a limited number of witnesses in the Senate. Speaking to reporters in her home state of Maine, Collins said Friday that she is working with a small group of other Republicans on a potential plan for witnesses. \"I am hopeful that we can reach an agreement on how to proceed with the trial that will allow the opportunity for both the House and the president's counsel if they choose to do so,\" Collins said. She did not provide further details on whom she is working with or which witnesses they are considering.", "With guest host Kimberly Adams. Schoolhouse Rock taught us about checks and balances within the American government. From Three Ring Government: No one part can be more powerful than any other is. Each controls the other you see, and that&#8217;s what we call checks and balances. Need a refresher on how the separation of powers works? Check out this explainer from Crash Course Throughout American history, there have been periods of intense friction between the executive and legislative branches of government. With the power struggle between President Trump and the Democratic-led House, we&#8217;re in such a period now. When Democrats took control of the House in 2018, the drumbeat for impeachment picked up. Then, the Mueller report was released. And Democrats started asking for testimony by some of the president&#8217;s closest associates in front of Congress. This week, former White House Counsel Don McGahn, didn&#8217;t show after President Donald Trump instructed him not to, even though a House committee issued a subpoena. The report by special counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s team on Russian meddling in the 2016 election prominently featured testimony by McGahn. Before McGahn declined to appear, top Democratic Rep. David Cicilline tweeted &#8220;If Don McGahn does not testify tomorrow, it will be time to begin an impeachment inquiry of @realDonaldTrump.&#8221; Prior to that, a Republican Congressman, Justin Amash, also called for impeachment proceedings. In March, Yoni Appelbaum, an Atlantic editor, argued for impeaching President Trump. He started by outlining what it actually means to impeach. &#8230;It is absurd to suggest that the Constitution would delineate a mechanism too potent to ever actually be employed. Impeachment, in fact, is a vital protection against the dangers a president like Trump poses. And, crucially, many of its benefits—to the political health of the country, to the stability of the constitutional system—accrue irrespective of its ultimate result. Impeachment is a process, not an outcome, a rule-bound procedure for investigating a president, considering evidence, formulating charges, and deciding whether to continue on to trial. How effective is the system of checks and balances today? What is the likelihood that Congress will impeach the president? Produced by Stacia Brown. GUESTS Norman Ornstein, Resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute; co-author, &#8220;One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate and the Not-Yet Deported&#8221;; @NormOrnstein James Antle, Editor-in-chief, The American Conservative magazine; former politics editor, Washington Examiner; senior advisor, Defense Priorities; @jimantle Bruce Gibney, Lawyer, venture capitalist, and author of “The Nonsense Factory: The Making and Breaking of the American Legal System&#8221; For more, visit https://the1a.org. &copy; 2019 WAMU 88.5 &#8211; American University Radio.", "Updated at 7:55 p.m. ET At about 7 p.m. ET Monday, House impeachment managers delivered to the Senate an article of impeachment against former President Donald Trump, a move that prompts preparations for a historic trial. The formal step comes just over a year after the House last transmitted an impeachment measure against Trump to the upper chamber. The latest rebuke alleges that the former president incited the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. On Tuesday, U.S. senators, who act as jurors in an impeachment trial, will be sworn in. The trial itself will begin on Feb. 9, giving the nine House impeachment managers and Trump's defense team two weeks to file briefs and finalize their legal preparations. An aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the delay will ensure Trump has due process. The two-week period also allows for other Senate business to continue, like the confirmation of President Biden's Cabinet nominees. \"There are three essential items on our plate: the trial of President Trump now that the House has impeached him; bold, strong COVID relief; and approving the president's Cabinet,\" Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters on Sunday. \"The Senate must advance all three in the next few weeks, and we will. The stakes are too high to delay any of them.\" The New York Democrat added: \"[The trial] will be fair, but it will move at a relatively fast pace.\" The House impeached Trump on Jan. 13 for an unprecedented second time, charging him with inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Some Republican senators have said they believe it's unconstitutional to hold an impeachment trial for a president who's already out of office. Others have decried what they view is a partisan exercise. \"I think the trial is stupid. I think it's counterproductive,\" Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said on Fox News Sunday. \"We already have a flaming fire in this country and it's like taking a bunch of gasoline and pouring it on top of the fire.\" Added Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday: \"It's a moot point. There are other things that we'd rather be working on instead.\" But Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., who is serving as one of the impeachment managers, said she's heartened by the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump. \"Ten was a historically high number. That was a bipartisan impeachment,\" she said on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday. \"Take a look at the words of [Wyoming Rep.] Liz Cheney, who said [Trump] assembled the mob, he incited the mob, and he lit the flame. ... I take heart in that. I hope, over the course of the remaining days, as we nine prepare this trial, more and more elected officials will pay attention to their oath and see the egregious high crimes and misdemeanors that this president was so desperate and capable of in the last weeks of his term in office.\" For her part, Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House, is now fending off attacks from her own party stemming from her decision to support Trump's impeachment. Another impeachment manager, Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, says he thinks the case for convicting Trump in the Senate trial will become stronger in the days ahead. \"As the days go on, more and more evidence comes out about the president's involvement in the incitement of this insurrection, the incitement of this riot, and also his dereliction of duty once it was going on,\" he told NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro. Castro said he's \"confident\" the case will be strong enough to convince GOP senators who haven't yet indicated how they'll vote on a conviction. \"I would hope that, first of all, they keep their powder dry, that they listen to all the evidence and wait for the case to be presented,\" he said. \"But most of all, at the end of the day, what we need is for people to put country over person, in other words, over Donald Trump and also country over party, Republican or Democrat.\"", "Democratic House impeachment managers wrapped up their arguments Thursday night in the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump for his actions leading up to and on the day of the Capitol insurrection. The trial, which began Tuesday and is Trump's second impeachment trial, comes just over a month after a mob of pro-Trump extremists violently breached the Capitol, leading to the deaths of at least seven people. In his closing remarks, House impeachment manager Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., said Trump is \"overwhelmingly guilty\" and asked the Senate for a vote to convict. \"Because if you don't, if we pretend this didn't happen or, worse, if we let it go unanswered, who's to say it won't happen again?\" The Senate is adjourned until noon ET Friday, when Trump's defense team will present its case. Here's a look at some of the main takeaways from the arguments on Thursday: Jan. 6 through the eyes of the rioters House manager Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., began the day by telling senators that she would walk through the events of Jan. 6 through the perspective of the rioters. She played footage of rioters shouting, \"Fight for Trump!\" as they stormed the Capitol, along with quotes from and interviews with members of the mob. \"Their own statements before, during and after the attack make clear the attack was done for Donald Trump, at his instructions and to fulfill his wishes,\" she said. \"They truly believed that the whole intrusion was at the president's orders, and we know that because they said so.\" So far, NPR's Investigations team has found that at least 26 of the alleged rioters who face criminal charges made specific statements that they stormed the Capitol at Trump's behest. DeGette noted that many rioters posed for pictures in the Capitol, bragging about the breach on social media and tagging the former president in the process. In other words, she explained, they wanted him to see what they were doing. At one point, DeGette played a video in which a man yells at a police officer, arguing that the crowd shouldn't be blocked from entering the complex. \"We are listening to Trump — your boss!\" he screams. \"Folks, this was not a hidden crime. The president told them to be there, and so they actually believed they would face no punishment,\" DeGette said. A warning against future attacks House manager Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., made a point of stressing that the trial is not just about holding Trump accountable for his past actions but also safeguarding the country's future against similar attacks. \"Because impeachment, conviction and disqualification [from office] is not just about the past. It's about the future,\" he said. \"It's making sure that no future official, no future president does the same exact thing President Trump does.\" Lieu played audio and read quotes from various White House officials who resigned in the wake of the attack, along with comments from Republican lawmakers condemning Trump for his actions leading up to the insurrection. The strategy here was to undermine the defense team's argument that the trial is merely a partisan exercise. America's global role House manager Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, pointed to statements from various world leaders in the days following the attack and argued that letting Trump's actions stand without consequence puts the country's international stature in jeopardy. \"What message will we send the rest of the world?\" he asked. He referenced a statement from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that read: \"What we witnessed was an assault on democracy by violent rioters incited by the current president and other politicians.\" Castro said the \"world is watching and wondering whether we are who we say we are\" and told senators the trial is a chance to stand up for the rule of law. What is an impeachable offense? Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., once again offered a prebuttal of the defense's argument that Trump's speech is protected under the First Amendment. He also argued there can be no doubt that Trump's actions constitute an impeachable offense. \"I hope we all can agree today that if a president does incite a violent insurrection against the government, he can be impeached for it,\" Raskin said. \"I hope we all can agree that that is a constitutional crime.\" Raskin, who taught constitutional law for decades, offered a historical view of impeachment as well. \"Centuries of history, not to mention the constitutional text, structure and original intent and understanding, all confirm the teaching of James Wilson, another framer, who wrote that impeachments and offenses come not within the sphere of ordinary jurisprudence,\" he explained. \"Simply put, impeachment was created for a purpose separate and distinct from criminal punishment. It was created to prevent and deter elected officials who swear an oath to represent America but then commit dangerous offenses against our republic. That's a constitutional crime.\" Watch Raskin's full c", "Updated on Jan. 20 at 11:15 p.m. ET The Senate has begun a trial on whether or not to remove President Trump from office, over a month after the House voted to impeach him. A group of House Democrats, called impeachment managers, are arguing the case for convicting the president and removing him from office. Trump's legal defense team includes White House counsel Pat Cipollone and personal lawyer Jay Sekulow. Read the latest news about the inquiry; listen to our special broadcast coverage. While momentum toward impeachment had been building among Democrats for months, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced an inquiry in September — after a whistleblower complaint about a White House phone call with Ukraine. In a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on July 25, Trump asked for an investigation into a debunked conspiracy theory about the 2016 election and into potential 2020 rival and former Vice President Joe Biden. The White House is also accused of withholding military aid to Ukraine for Trump's personal political gain. Trump maintains that he has done nothing wrong. The House conducted an inquiry that involved a series of closed-door depositions followed by open hearings with key witnesses, including career diplomats with expertise in Ukraine policy. The House Judiciary Committee then voted to recommend impeachment, and the full House voted to impeach on Dec. 18. The Senate trial began in earnest on Jan. 21, with a vote on the ground rules. Each side then had 24 hours over three days for opening arguments. A period of questioning and then debate over witnesses follows the arguments. At the end of the trial, the Senate will vote on whether to remove Trump from office or acquit him. The Articles The House brought two articles of impeachment against Trump: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. \"President Trump has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice, and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States,\" the resolution reads. Read the articles. The Trial Following the House vote to impeach, the Senate holds a trial. Republican and Democratic leadership have been fighting over what constitutes a \"fair\" trial and whether that includes witnesses who did not take part in the House's investigation. In the trial, members of the House serve as \"managers\" who make the case for Trump's removal. The president has his own defense team, including White House counsel, outside attorneys and Republican members of the House. After the proceedings, senators vote on whether to remove or acquit Trump, based on each article. Read more about the trial process. Who Was On The Call The White House has not released a full list of participants on the July 25 call, but NPR has compiled a list of people identified so far. Here's who they are. Timeline: The Ukraine Affair From Trump's early focus on Ukraine in 2017, to the release of the whistleblower complaint on Sept. 26, here's how we got to the impeachment inquiry. Separately, here is a full timeline of the impeachment inquiry, including these key dates: Dec. 11: House Judiciary begins debate on articlesDec. 13: House Judiciary approves articles of impeachmentDec. 18: Full House debates the articles and then votes to impeachJan. 16: House impeachment managers hand-deliver the articles to the Senate, a day after being appointed. U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts and senators are sworn in.Jan. 21: Opening arguments begin in the Senate trial. Who And What: Key People And Concepts Since the original whistleblower complaint was released, the list of names of those connected to Trump's call with Zelenskiy or to broader Ukraine policy has grown substantially. From the president to career diplomats to private lawyers, here is a quick guide to people connected to the events being investigated. In-depth profiles and features: John Bolton: Democrats now have an unlikely ally Pat Cipollone: Trial turns spotlight on White House counsel Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman: A complicated web connects two Soviet-born businessmen with the inquiry Nancy Pelosi: How the House speaker unified a divided caucus Mike Pence: Inquiry will test a political path shaped by faith Rick Perry: How the energy secretary became a key figure Adam Schiff: The surprising face of the impeachment inquiry Gordon Sondland: The ambassador whose texts put him at the center of the Ukraine scandal Kurt Volker: Ex-U.S. special envoy to Ukraine caught in whirlwind of impeachment inquiry Marie Yovanovitch: How the former ambassador became a target in Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskiy: How Ukraine's president wound up in the middle Quid pro quo: From simple exchange to shakedown, here's how the phrase evolved Trump and the CIA: How the relationship between Trump and his spy chiefs soured Documents: Primary Sources Written words are central to the Ukraine affair. The significance of the ", "Across from a Capitol Hill impeachment hearing that President Trump and his allies loudly rebuked, members of the White House legal team and its top legislative aide huddled Wednesday with Senate Republicans over lunch to plot out a potential trial in the upper chamber. White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Legislative Affairs Director Eric Ueland were among those who met with the Republicans for more than an hour behind closed doors off the Senate chamber. Ueland said the conversation was part of an ongoing effort to keep in close contact with Senate Republicans as the impeachment process picks up speed in the House. Cipollone declined to comment on the meeting. \"We believe that the president's rights need to be expansively respected, including the opportunity to call witnesses and have the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses as part of a trial process,\" Ueland said. \"The president wants his case made fully in the Senate, including the full trial and that's a point we are going to make consistently.\" Senate Republicans emerging from Wednesday's lunch said it remains to be seen whether any witnesses are called in a Senate impeachment trial, along with other mechanics behind the process such as how long it could last. \"I think that [White House officials] just wanted to help us ... get an understanding of where they're coming from and how they see it,\" said Senate Majority Whip John Thune, R-S.D. \"It's a fluid process ... there's a lot of uncertainty surrounding this.\" The argument of whether to call witnesses goes to a central debate among Senate Republicans on how long a trial could take and what it could look like. Some Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, a key Trump ally, have warned that calling witnesses could force an impeachment trial to drag on. Already, Trump has said he would like to force Rep. Adam Schiff (the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee) and the anonymous whistleblower at the center of the House impeachment inquiry to testify in the Senate. \"They'll make a request for witnesses, but that would have to be granted by the Senate,\" Graham said following a White House meeting last month on impeachment. And \"I don't know what appetite there is in the Senate by either party to make this a long, drawn-out thing.\" At that Nov. 21 meeting, Graham and a small group of Senate Republicans met with Cipollone and other top White House officials and discussed the potential for a two-week trial. However, that could be difficult if witnesses are called. \"This process doesn't need to take super long,\" Ueland said in light of the demands for witnesses. With shortcomings in the House process, \"the way to address those, it's pretty easy ... and not a matter of months or years in order to elicit information, put witnesses on, lay out our case and move on ahead in the Senate.\" Trump has rebuked the House impeachment inquiry, refusing to participate in a formal defense before investigating committees. On Dec. 1, Cipollone sent a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler rejecting an offer to participate in Wednesday's hearing examining findings in the probe. An anonymous whistleblower called the alarm on a July 25 call between Trump and the Ukrainian president that is at the heart of the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry, raising concerns that nearly $400 million in military aid was withheld for a political favor. It triggered the formal inquiry and a widespread investigation by the House Intelligence Committee that entailed testimony from more than a dozen witnesses and a series of public hearings. Trump has labeled the call \"perfect.\" Ueland, for his part, repeatedly called the House impeachment process \"fatally flawed,\" and he hopes to address that concern in a potential trial. The president \"feels like he has had no opportunity to tell his side of the story or defend against the allegations, and at some point he should have the right to do that,\" Ueland said. Senate Republicans leaving Wednesday's luncheon suggested the month of January is now being set aside for a potential impeachment trial. \"Best to plan for that,\" said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D. Senate Republicans also agreed that it's likely Cipollone will represent the president in a trial, and the White House would use its current legal team to mount a defense. Cipollone \"seemed to have confidence that they had hundreds of years of legal defense [experience] in their White House team,\" said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.", "The Senate trial of former President Donald Trump began with a jarring and graphic video of the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6. The lead House manager, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., used the montage to tie Trump's message to his supporters that morning to their violent actions breaching the building and attacking U.S. Capitol police. The resolution setting the rules for the trial designated Tuesday for a debate on the question of whether the Senate trial of Trump, whose term in office has expired, is constitutional. The House managers and the defense team eventually each addressed the issue. But the most memorable moments of Day 1 of the trial were less about the arguments on that issue, and more about the contrasting styles of the two legal teams and the reactions they elicited from senators sitting as jurors in the second impeachment trial for Trump in roughly a year. The Senate voted 56-44, as expected, that the trial was constitutional and to proceed to a presentation by the managers. The vote, with six Republicans joining all the Democrats, was similar to a test vote a couple of weeks ago on the same issue, with one Republican, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, changing his vote. He said he was persuaded by the arguments from the managers that the trial met the standard to move forward. On Wednesday, House impeachment managers will begin presenting their case, starting at noon and lasting up to 16 hours over two days. Here are some takeaways from the first day and what to expect next. Graphic video opening was effective Even before the trial started, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that the managers would reveal some new evidence. They signaled going into the trial that lawmakers themselves were witnesses, since they were present for the attack and many were whisked out of the House and Senate chambers as pro-Trump extremists crashed through windows and doors and vowed to \"take the building.\" Some pledged harm to then-Vice President Mike Pence and top Democrats. Raskin, a constitutional law professor, prefaced that his presentation would be free from \"extended lectures\" and \"based on cold, hard facts.\" He then rolled a highly produced video that he said depicted the timeline of the events both outside, starting at a rally that Trump headlined, and inside, as both chambers gathered for their constitutional duty to count and certify the electoral votes. It was hard to watch, and according to pool reporters inside the Senate chamber, some senators looked away. When it concluded, the chamber was silent. Raskin said that \"if that's not an impeachable offense, then there's no such thing.\" A central theme in the managers' arguments is that a president is accountable for conduct from Day 1 to his final day in office. \"A January exception is an invitation to our founders' worst nightmare,\" Raskin said, using a phrase that is shaping up to be a mantra for the prosecution. Referring to Trump, Raskin said \"he wants you to decide that the Senate is powerless\" by deciding in the defense's favor that you cannot hold the former president to task for his role in the insurrection, amounting to a get-out-of-jail-free card. Colorado Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse cited conservative legal figures to appeal to Republican senators, noting that leading figures in the Federalist Society, as well as GOP attorney Chuck Cooper, agreed with their position that a former president could face prosecution, and that even though removal from office was not on the table, disqualification from running for future office was contemplated by the founders. Rhode Island Democratic Rep. David Cicilline attempted to rebut arguments from the defense that Trump, like other politicians, uses inflammatory language, but that doesn't mean he incited the riot. Cicilline said Trump stood apart because he was the president of the United States who was arguing to his base that the only way he could lose was because of a conspiracy. He asked, \"Does anybody believe the Capitol attack would have occurred if not for Trump?\" Defense team got poor marks from Republicans Trump defense team attorney Bruce Castor Jr., a former prosecutor from suburban Philadelphia, was the lead-off speaker. He began his remarks name-checking some senators and discussing their roles, and it was unclear how his musings would form the basis of a cogent legal argument. His presentation was hard to follow as it jumped from what appeared to be a stream-of-consciousness talk that ignored the constitutional issue at hand. Castor also did something that Trump has not done yet — he acknowledged that voters in November picked a new administration and that his client lost. As he wrapped up his portion of the presentation and prepared to hand it over to David Schoen, his partner on the defense team, Castor said he changed his strategy abruptly after listening to the impeachment managers. He thought their arguments were \"well done.\" He previewed that his team would have \"counter-argum", "The Senate is scheduled to vote on President Trump's fate on Wednesday at 4 p.m. ET after about two weeks of his impeachment trial. The House of Representatives impeached the president in December, charging him with abusing his power and obstructing Congress for efforts to get Ukraine to investigate Trump's political rivals. The Senate trial has included opening and closing arguments from the Democratic House impeachment managers and Trump's defense team, as well as a 16-hour period of questioning by senators. Outside of the official trial, senators have time Monday through Wednesday to speak on the floor about impeachment. The trial itself had a raucous start. Senators passed a resolution on the ground rules for the trial on Jan. 21 after a marathon 13 hours of debate that included multiple failed attempts by Democrats to get a commitment on witnesses and documents. The issue of whether to allow witnesses has been a central controversy in the proceedings, with senators ultimately voting not to call any at all. Here is more about how the trial has played out. Setting The Ground Rules Timing: Senate passed organizing resolution on Jan. 21 The details of a Senate impeachment trial are generally up for negotiation, but that negotiation essentially ended when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced he had the votes to move ahead with a resolution outlining the process without Democrats. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., delayed transmitting the articles to the Senate for nearly a month, hoping to get details on how the trial would work. McConnell didn't budge, though. Republicans passed McConnell's resolution on Jan. 21, with some last-minute, hand-written changes, but not before Democrats offered multiple amendments, triggering hours of debate. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had been pushing for a deal up front that would include testimony from witnesses, including Trump administration officials. The resolution that passed delayed debate on witnesses and new evidence until after days of opening statements and questioning from senators. The Trial Timing: Opening arguments began on Jan. 22 During the trial, there are clear rules for each of the key players. U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts presides. Senators do not do the talking; they can only submit written questions. Senators did have a 16-hour period of questioning after both parties gave opening arguments, where senators submitted written questions that Roberts then read allowed to the prosecution and defense teams. Impeachment managers from the House represent the Democrats' argument. The president's defense includes White House counsel, outside attorneys and a number of Republican members of the House. Opening arguments began Jan. 22. Each side had up to 24 hours over three days to make their case (the original resolution from McConnell only afforded two days to each side). The Democratic managers went first, then the defense team made its case. It was the first time in the inquiry that the White House has fully participated. The White House declined to participate in the Democratic-led House proceedings, which Trump considered a \"sham.\" After opening arguments, senators had 16 hours to ask questions in the chamber, followed by two hours of arguments each by the House impeachment managers and the president's lawyers. Then came the debate on whether to subpoena witnesses or introduce new documents. This is where moderate Republicans became crucial to each side. Four Republicans would have had to join the Democratic caucus to get witnesses, but Democrats only convinced two to join them, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah. Swing votes Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska announced before the vote that they opposed witnesses. The Final Vote Timing: Feb. 5 at 4 p.m. ET After the trial, the Senate votes on whether to convict or acquit the president on each article of impeachment. Convicting Trump and therefore removing him from office requires 67 votes. That would mean 20 Republicans would have to join Democrats in the effort — a highly unlikely prospect. Acquitting Trump of the charges or dismissing the charges, however, takes only 51 votes. This is the most likely outcome in the Republican-controlled Senate. Can't see the graphics in this story? Click here. Photos: Win McNamee/Getty Images (Mitch McConnell); Paul Morigi/Getty Images (Susan Collins); Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images (Lisa Murkowski and John Roberts); Mark Wilson/Getty Images (Cory Gardner, Joe Manchin, Martha McSally and Chuck Schumer); Alex Wong/Getty Images (Doug Jones and Mitt Romney) This story originally published on Dec. 31, 2019.", "Updated at 10:51 p.m. ET House Democrats concluded on Wednesday the first of three days of opening arguments in the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump, arguing that the president must be removed from office for abusing his office and obstructing Congress. In his closing remarks, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is leading the prosecution of the president, reminded the chamber of the career civil servants and foreign service officers who sometimes defied orders from the White House not to appear in order to testify about the president's pressure campaign on Ukraine. \"Some courageous people came forward. Courageous people that risked their entire careers,\" Schiff said. \"They risked everything, their careers. And yes I know what you're asked to decide may risk yours, too. But if they could show the courage, so could we.\" The trial will resume at 1 p.m. on Thursday. Schiff recalled the nation's founders who devised of impeachment as way to check an executive who abused the office for personal gain. \"They knew what it was like to like under a despot, and they risked their lives to be free of it. They knew they were creating an enormously powerful executive, and they knew they needed to constrain it,\" Schiff said. If Trump is not removed from office, Schiff argued during his opening remarks, the president's actions \"will permanently alter the balance of power among the branches of government—inviting future presidents to operate as if they are also beyond the reach of accountability, congressional oversight and the law,\" he said. \"I recognize that there will be times during the trial that you may long to return to the business of the Senate,\" Schiff said. \"The American people look forward to the same. But not before you decide what kind of democracy you believe we ought to be and what the American people have a right to expect in the conduct of their president.\" Although Trump's acquittal is all but certain, since Democrats do not have the votes to convict, both sides continue to spar over the production of evidence, and additional witness testimony, that the White House has blocked investigators from reviewing. A two-thirds vote (67 votes) is required to convict the president, meaning Democrats would need 20 GOP senators to defy Trump. But in order to call additional witnesses, like former National Security Adviser John Bolton, Democrats only need four Republicans to join them, yet there are no indications right now they will be able to convince any GOP Senators to break with their leadership. Still, Schiff on Wednesday made the case for evidence to be brought into the trial. For instance, notes from first-hand witnesses who listened in on the July 25 call between Trump and the Ukrainian president would help further establish the take-away from the call, perhaps resolve disputes over whether the \"favor\" Trump sought was part of a quid-pro-quo scheme, Schiff said. \"In any courtroom in America holding a fair trial, you would want to see contemporaneous notes. This Senate should be no different. Demand those notes. Demand to see the truth,\" he argued. In Davos, Switzerland, where Trump was attending the World Economic Forum meeting, Trump re-emphasized his view that the impeachment case against him is a \"hoax.\" \"I think it's so bad for the country,\" he said, adding: \"I'd love to go to the trial, sit in the front row and stare at their corrupt faces.\" Jay Sekulow, President Trump's private attorney and part of Trump's impeachment defense team told reporters Wednesday that the president's legal team would not support Trump showing up. \"His counsel might recommend against that,\" he said with a laugh. Sekulow said Trump's defense will come in two parts. \"We're going to respond of course to what the House managers put forward. And we're going to make an affirmative case defending the president,\" Sekulow said. The president, who has said he is open to hearing from witnesses in the Senate trial, said Wednesday that that decision was ultimately up to the Senate. \"Personally, I'd rather go the long route,\" he said. Wrapping up his lengthy opening statement, Schiff said: \"We all, Democrats and Republicans alike, must ask ourselves whether our loyalty is to our party or whether it is to our Constitution.\" Earlier, as he met with reporters just before heading to the Senate, Schiff said the managers \"will lay out all the facts and chronology,\" in the coming days. \"We believe we will make an overwhelming case for the president's conviction on both Article 1 and Article 2,\" he added. Schiff threw cold water on reports of a deal to allow Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden, to testify in return for a witness Democrats want to hear from, saying this is not \"some fantasy football trade.\" That stance was echoed later in the day by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who said a witness trade is \"off the table.\" While Biden campaigned on Wednesday, a voter in Osage, Iowa, asked the ", "Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio says the president's legal team plans to present \"key facts\" that prove President Trump should not be removed from office. Jordan is one of eight House lawmakers who are part of Trump&#8217;s defense team in the Senate impeachment trial. \"The Trump defense team will present the facts,\" he says, \"and the facts are all on the president's side.\" He says the team plans to talk about the \"unconstitutional nature of the two articles\" — which charges Trump with abuse of power and obstructing Congress. He says the defense will also discuss \"the lack of due process that took place in the House of Representatives.\" So far, House impeachment managers are their second day of formal opening statements. On Wednesday, Rep. Adam Schiff outlined the charges against Trump — which include abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — and pressed for the need for new witnesses and evidence. The Senate is set to reconvene Thursday afternoon. Interview Highlights On how the Trump defense team may respond to the Democrat's evidence in the Senate impeachment trial \"The Trump defense team will present the facts and the facts are all on the president's side. They'll also talk about the unconstitutional nature of the two articles, and I also believe they will discuss the lack of due process that took place in the House of Representatives. \"The president was denied just any measure of, any semblance of due process — he wasn't allowed to have lawyers present during the witness deposition, he wasn't allowed to cross-examine. Republicans couldn't subpoena any of the witnesses we wanted so, that'll be part of the case as well. But primarily it's going to be, I think, pointing out the fact that the key facts are all on the president's side.\" On whether the president did anything wrong \"Well, look, aid was not ultimately held. It was paused for a few days when the president was checking out to make sure that this new guy, this former TV personality who just got elected and whose party had just taken over their parliament to see if he was legit, if he was a genuine reformer as he campaigned to be, and over that time the president became convinced because senior U.S. officials met with President Zelenskiy — we had U.S. senators, we had the vice president, we had the head of the NSC — all meet with President Zelenskiy in that 55-day period when the aid was on hold and they all said, you know what, we think &#8230; he's the real deal.\" &nbsp; On whether it's OK for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival \"You're missing the four key facts. The four key facts are, we have the call transcript, tell me where the quid pro quo was. It wasn't there. The two individuals who were on the call, who talked to each other, have repeatedly said &#8230; In fact the very next day, President Zelenskiy in a previously-scheduled meeting, the very next day, the call's on the 25, the very next day, the July 26, President Zelenskiy meets with ambassadors Volker, Sondland and Taylor in Kyiv, and guess what he said — the call was great, the call was fine, had a great call with the president of the United States. No pressure, no linkage, no pushing. He repeatedly says that there was none of that. Third, Ukrainians didn't even know aid was on hold at the time of the call, so how could there be pressure, how could there be a favor, how could we say if you want the aid you gotta do X — they didn't even know aid was on hold at the time. And most importantly, tell me when they started the investigation. Tell me when they promised to start the investigation. Tell me when they announced they were thinking about the investigation. It never happened. So this idea that somehow there was a quid pro quo &#8230; To have a quid pro quo, something has to happen. They never made the announcement, they never started an investigation, and they never promised to start an investigation and guess what, they got the meeting with the president, they got the money, and they got the phone call ... The Democrats just don't want to look at the facts.\" &nbsp; On whether there should be witnesses \"I think the trial should have been done already. I think that a motion to dismiss, a motion to acquit up front, would have been the appropriate measure. The Senate, we're going to hear from both sides, let them present their arguments and then take the questions. At that point, there'll be a decision made whether they'll be witnesses or not. That'll be up to the United States Senate. I think once they see all the facts — as we've just talked about in a brief way here — but once they see all the facts laid out, I think that they'll, I hope, that there won't be witnesses called. But if you do, if you go down that road, if you start down the witness road, then you got to go all the way down it. You can't just say, 'Oh, the prosecution can call their witnesses but the president can't call witnesses he might want.' So if we're going to start dow", "Updated Sunday at 11:34 a.m. ET The White House's legal team has called the House impeachment process \"highly partisan and reckless\" in a forceful response to the summons issued last week by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ahead of President Trump's Senate impeachment trial, which begins Tuesday. \"The articles of impeachment submitted by House Democrats are a dangerous attack on the right of the American people to freely choose their President,\" private attorney Jay Sekulow and White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who are members of Trump's legal team, wrote in a response Saturday. \"This is a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election.\" Also Saturday: The seven House impeachment managers laid out the case that they will present to the Senate in the trial. \"President Trump abused the powers of his office to invite foreign interference in an election for his own personal political gain and to the detriment of American national security interests,\" the managers wrote in their brief. \"He abandoned his oath to faithfully execute the laws and betrayed his public trust. President Trump's misconduct presents a danger to our democratic processes, our national security, and our commitment to the rule of law. He must be removed from office.\" The White House response and House managers' brief are formal procedures of the impeachment trial. Sources close to the president's legal team said the White House will also file a brief on Monday. The actions come a month after the House approved two articles of impeachment against the president, charging him with abusing the powers of his office by attempting to pressure the government of Ukraine to investigate potential political opponent Joe Biden and his son's activities there, and with obstructing Congress by refusing to cooperate in its investigation. Last week, the House of Representatives delivered the articles of impeachment against Trump to the Senate after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi named seven Democratic members of Congress as the managers who will argue the case for impeachment. They are Reps. Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, Val Demings, Hakeem Jeffries, Sylvia Garcia and Jason Crow. Pelosi said Schiff will take the lead. \"The only remaining question is whether the members of the Senate will accept and carry out the responsibility placed on them by the Framers of our Constitution and their constitutional Oaths,\" the House managers wrote in the brief. Trump denies any wrongdoing and has excoriated the process. Robert Ray, another member of the president's defense team, told NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro on Sunday that the charges against Trump are not impeachable crimes. \"It's not, importantly, treason, bribery or any other high crime or misdemeanor,\" Ray said. \"It's not bribery. It's not extortion. It's not an illegal campaign contribution. It's not any of those things. And because it is not any of those things, that is why it is not impeachable.\" On Thursday, a nonpartisan federal watchdog concluded that Trump broke the law when he froze assistance funds for Ukraine. The White House has said that it believed Trump was acting within his legal authority. The rules that will govern the Senate trial — how long it will last, how many hours a day it will go on for and other details — will be made public Tuesday when the Senate votes on a rules resolution that will formally kick off the process. Twenty Republican senators would need to break with the president and join with all Democrats to remove Trump from office. There is little to no indication at this point that this is likely to happen — or come close.", "Former President Donald Trump has named two new attorneys to head up his impeachment defense ahead of next week's trial in the Senate. Trump was in need of new representation following the reported departure of all five members of his defense team this weekend. Now leading the team are attorneys David Schoen and Bruce Castor Jr. — both experienced in criminal defense. The trial over Trump's role in the Capitol attack in early January is set for Feb. 9. Trump's team has until Tuesday to respond to the article of impeachment passed by the House charging him with \"incitement of insurrection.\" In a statement, Trump's office says: \"Notably, Schoen has already been working with the 45th President and other advisors to prepare for the upcoming trial, and both Schoen and Castor agree that this impeachment is unconstitutional — a fact 45 Senators voted in agreement with last week.\" The vote referenced indicates that garnering the necessary two-thirds vote for a Senate conviction is highly unlikely, considering that all but five GOP senators voted to dismiss the trial as unconstitutional. Castor said in the statement, \"I consider it a privilege to represent the 45th President. The strength of our Constitution is about to be tested like never before in our history. It is strong and resilient. A document written for the ages, and it will triumph over partisanship yet again, and always.\" One of Schoen's recent, high-profile clients was Trump ally Roger Stone, whom he represented during a sentencing appeal last April. He also has focused on civil rights litigation in Alabama. Schoen most recently made headlines for meeting with accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein before Epstein's death in a New York prison. Castor was Montgomery County, Pa., district attorney from 2000 to 2008. During his time in office, he declined to prosecute actor and comedian Bill Cosby for sexual assault-related charges when one of Cosby's accusers, Andrea Constand, went to police in 2005. Constand later sued Castor in Philadelphia for defamation related to that case. The two parties settled the case confidentially out of court in 2019, according to reports. Several other accusers of Cosby's later came forward to report him for sexually assaulting them over the years. Cosby is currently in prison. After leaving the district attorney's office, Castor subsequently served as commissioner for Montgomery County and later briefly as the acting attorney general for Pennsylvania.", "The third day of President Trump&#8217;s Senate impeachment trial. Law experts share their take on the president’s case – and what’s at stake for the Constitution and the country. Guests Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard University Law School. Co-author of &#8220;To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment and the Constitution.&#8221; (@tribelaw) Alison LaCroix, professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School. (@UChicagoLaw) From The Reading List The Washington Post: &#8220;Impeachment trial live updates: Senate hears opening arguments making the case against Trump&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;House managers, led by Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), began presenting three days of opening arguments Wednesday in the historic Senate impeachment trial of President Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. &#8220;Earlier in the day, Trump said at a news conference in Switzerland that he &#8216;can live either way&#8217; with the Senate’s decision on whether to call witnesses in a trial focused on his administration’s conduct toward Ukraine. &#8220;The crux of the House case is the allegation that Trump withheld military aid and a White House meeting to pressure Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, a political rival, as well as his son Hunter Biden.&#8221; The New York Times: &#8220;Impeachment Schedule Explained: Why the Trial Could Last Weeks&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;With the adoption early Wednesday morning of the ground rules for President Trump’s impeachment trial, the Senate prepared to plunge forward over the next week with oral arguments, questions from senators and consequential votes on whether to admit new evidence. &#8220;The trial could be over in two weeks, or it could stretch on much longer, depending on how much time is used by each side and how much additional evidence — if any — senators vote to review. &#8220;After a bruising 12-hour debate that underscored the deep acrimony between Republicans and Democrats at the outset of the trial, Republicans pushed through a set of rules that would postpone until next week at the earliest a final decision on whether to call witnesses or subpoena documents for the trial.&#8221; The Washington Post: &#8220;Trump’s lawyers shouldn’t be allowed to use bogus legal arguments on impeachment&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;The president’s lawyers have made the sweeping assertion that the articles of impeachment against President Trump must be dismissed because they fail to allege that he committed a crime — and are, therefore, as they said in a filing with the Senate, &#8216;constitutionally invalid on their face.&#8217; &#8220;Another of his lawyers, my former Harvard Law School colleague Alan Dershowitz, claiming to represent the Constitution rather than the president as such, makes the backup argument that the articles must be dismissed because neither abuse of power nor obstruction of Congress can count as impeachable offenses. &#8220;Both of these arguments are baseless. Senators weighing the articles of impeachment shouldn’t think that they offer an excuse for not performing their constitutional duty.&#8221; This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "As the trial of President Donald Trump continues, we’ll check back in with reporters far away from Washington. How has the trial impacted voter opinion of senators in key states?\n\n\nGuests Kimberly Atkins, senior news correspondent for WBUR. (@KimberlyEAtkins) Sonja Hutson, politics and government reporter for KUER, Utah&#8217;s NPR station. (@SonjaHutson) Steve Mistler, chief political correspondent for Maine Public Radio. (@stevemistler) Liz Ruskin, Washington correspondent for Alaska Public Media. (@lruskin) Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, politics reporter and co-host of &#8220;The Tri-Star State&#8221; for Nashville Public Radio.  (@SergioMarBel) Andrew Yeager, host and reporter for WBHM&#8217;s Morning Edition in Birmingham, Alabama. (@andsygr) \nFrom The Reading List\n\n The Salt Lake Tribune: &#8220;Sen. Mitt Romney may upend a quick acquittal of President Trump&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Sen. Mitt Romney isn’t toeing the Republican line. He isn’t jumping on Fox News to defend President Donald Trump. He isn’t forecasting his vote to acquit or convict.&#8221;Romney is a leading figure supporting witness testimony in the impeachment trial and one of the few Republicans who has said he is viewing the arguments for and against the president with an open mind. &#8220;The Utah Republican has come under fire from Trump fans for his interest in hearing testimony from former national security adviser John Bolton — who may undercut the defense laid out by Trump’s lawyers — and earned hero status among those on the left who see Romney as key to bringing about a fair trial.&#8221; Alaska Public Media: &#8220;Impeachment witnesses? Murkowski still isn&#8217;t saying&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Two Republicans, U.S. Senators Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, said Monday it’s more likely that former National Security Advisor John Bolton will be called as a witness in President Trump’s impeachment trial, now that details from his book are emerging. But Sen. Lisa Murkowski still isn’t saying how she’ll vote on witnesses. &#8220;Day Seven of the impeachment trial ended with a lecture from former constitutional law professor Alan Dershowitz. Murkowski said it felt like she was back in law school. &#8216;It really did,&#8217; she said. &#8216;And I was taking notes like I was back in con law 101.&#8217; &#8220;Murkowski, Romney and Collins are among a handful of Republicans who’ve suggested they are open to hearing from witnesses. Murkowski said news reports about Bolton’s book have continued to pique her interest about what he might say, though she believes it’s too soon for her to decide on witnesses. &#8216;I need to wait until the White House managers have finished the presentation of their case before I make a determination,&#8217; Murkowski said.&#8221; Politico: &#8220;Trio of Dem Senators considering vote to acquit Trump&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;A trio of moderate Senate Democrats is wrestling with whether to vote to convict Donald Trump in his impeachment trial — or give the president the bipartisan acquittal he’s eagerly seeking. &#8220;Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Doug Jones of Alabama are undecided on whether to vote to remove the president from office and are “struggling” over where to land, said Manchin. It’s a decision that could have major ramifications for each senator’s legacy and political prospects — as well shape the broader political dynamic surrounding impeachment heading into the 2020 election. &#8220;&#8230; Manchin insisted Tuesday he hasn’t figured out where he will come down. And won’t until the trial ends. &#8216;I know it’s hard to believe that. But I really am [undecided]. But I have not made a final decision. Every day, I hear something, I think &#8220;this is compelling, that’s compelling,&#8217; Manchin said in an interview. &#8216;Everyone’s struggling a little bit.'&#8221; \n\n This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "Updated at 7:35 p.m. ET Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told a group of Senate Republicans late Tuesday that he does not yet have the votes to stop Democrats from calling witnesses during the impeachment trial of President Trump, according to people familiar with the discussion. But even as McConnell made the concession, the dynamic remains fluid. Whether Democrats' push for witnesses succeeds or fails could come down to a group of moderate Republicans who have remained open, but uncommitted, to new witnesses since the start of the trial. Republicans privately are confident that they can overcome Democratic subpoenas for new witnesses. Democrats need at least four Republicans to cross party lines and support new witnesses in order to meet the threshold for bringing new witnesses and evidence into the trial. Pressure has been building on senators to hear from former National Security Adviser John Bolton, whom Democrats say has a first-hand account of Trump's dealing with Ukraine at the heart of the impeachment case. Bolton, who has a forthcoming book detailing his knowledge of the Ukraine pressure campaign, has said he is willing to share his side of the story with senators. Yet Trump's defense team has fought back, saying Bolton has nothing of value to offer senators, since they argue even if Bolton's account is true, it would not clear the bar of constituting an impeachable offense. Earlier Tuesday, President Trump's defense team completed its arguments against his removal from office in the Senate impeachment trial. \"I think we've made our case,\" White House counsel Pat Cipollone said. \"All you need in this case is the Constitution and your common sense.\" He said the two articles of impeachment passed last month by the House of Representatives — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — \"fall far short of any constitutional standard and they are dangerous,\" a word he repeated several times in final remarks. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said that starting Wednesday at 1 p.m. ET, senators will have a chance to submit written questions to the House impeachment managers and Trump's defense lawyers through U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, with each party alternating. They will have a total of 16 hours over two days for questions. After the questions wrap up, senators will then take up whether to call witnesses. Tuesday's proceedings concluded against the backdrop of a New York Times report this week that cited the unpublished manuscript of a book being written by former national security adviser John Bolton about, among other things, his time in the Trump White House. Bolton writes, according to the newspaper, that Trump told him that he was withholding military aid to Ukraine until the government there began an investigation into political rivals, including former Vice President Joe Biden's and his son Hunter's activities. That allegation is at the heart of Trump's impeachment. But, in an apparent reference to the manuscript, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow told senators Tuesday that impeachment \"is not a game of leaks and unsourced manuscripts.\" Most of the president's lawyers have steered clear of the Bolton report, except for Alan Dershowitz, who argued Monday that even if the former national security adviser's allegations were true, they weren't sufficient to remove a president from office. Still, the news report prompted Democrats to demand that Bolton be called as a witness in the Senate trial. Democrats need to persuade at least four Republicans to defect from their party's leadership in order to support a subpoena of Bolton, a threshold that Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said on Monday appeared \"increasingly likely.\" Some Republicans have floated the idea of a deal on witnesses: one that would include calling Hunter Biden to testify. But before the final day of Trump's defense began, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., dismissed that idea. \"Hunter Biden has nothing to do with the facts of this trial,\" he said at a news conference Tuesday morning. Schumer insisted that senators should hear from the same four witnesses whom he has been pushing for since the start of the trial — Bolton; acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney; Robert Blair, a White House official; and Michael Duffey, an official at the Office of Management and Budget. \"We're not bargaining with them — four witnesses and four sets of documents,\" Schumer said. He also dismissed a proposal floated by GOP Sens. James Lankford and Lindsey Graham to allow senators to read Bolton's manuscript in the secure room in the Capitol, a room known as the \"SCIF.\" Schumer called this idea \"absurd.\" \"It's a book,\" he said. \"There's no need for it to be read in the SCIF unless you want to hide something.\" Trump's lawyers, who began their arguments Saturday, had 24 hours over three days to make their case — the same time given to the Democratic House impeachment managers who presented their arguments against the " ]

[ "Not sure about its origins, but here is an old recording of CSA vets doing the rebel yell in the 1930's. Pretty impressive to see those old timers still belting it out. _URL_0_" ]

[ "Aren't war cries pretty much the rule for any charging soldier, from Athenian hoplites to the Green Mountain Boys to the Rebel yell to the banzai charge? It's a form of psyching yourself up. Siberian troops on the charge during Operation Uranus were known for a distinctive \"Urrrraaaah!\" cry that freezing Wehrmacht troops quickly learned to identify, and U.S. paratroopers did indeed yell \"Geronimo!\" when leaping out of a C-47's doorway over occupied France.", "From [_URL_1_](_URL_0_): > **Geronimo**:cry made in jumping, apparently from the story of the Apache leader *Geronimo* making a daring leap to escape U.S. cavalry pursuers at Medicine Bluffs, Oklahoma (and supposedly shouting his name in defiance as he did). Adopted as battle cry by 82nd Airborne U.S. paratroopers in World War II, who perhaps had seen it in the 1939 Paramount Studios movie \"Geronimo.\"", "Joseph Wheeler, a Confederate cavalry general in the Civil War, went on to serve as a major-general during the Spanish-American war and forgetting himself in the heat of a battle yelled [\"Let's go, boys! We've got the damn Yankees on the run again!\"](_URL_0_). It’s a bit of an anecdote, but the fact the government gave Wheeler a position of pretty high command suggests the bad blood had begun to dissipate by the end of the century. Wikipedia also lists [Fitzhugh Lee & Matthew Butler] (_URL_1_) as former Confederate major-generals who commanded troops in the Spanish-American war.", "The Confederates are considered Americans. The Confederate States of American was seen as illegal and therefore illegitimate by the United States government, meaning that the confederates were rebels, but still maintained their American identity. This is why the Civil War had the highest American death toll, it was Americans killing Americans.", "It sounds similar to [sea legs](_URL_0_). Does this article help at all?", "There's a revolution going on, which is effectively a civil war. The government forces (the army) are loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. The FSA (Free Syrian Army) are the rebels, made up of citizens, soliders who defected, and anyone else who has decided to fight with them. The Syrian government doesn't seem to be doing so well, despite having used artillery, snipers, tanks, and heavy weapons against the rebels. Recently, they cut all internet access with the outside world. What everyone is worried about is that since the government regime is doing badly, they might be considering using chemical weapons. --- None of the other countries want to get entangled in the civil war, but the US also doesn't want Syria to use chemical weapons. It may mean that the American government will intervene if chemical weapons are used.", "The honest answer is, no one has any real idea what they sounded like. We can only make assumptions at this point.", "Have a look at this link, in particular the thread originating from comment by u/burningblacksun _URL_0_", "A number of Native Americans fought for the Confederacy. Stand Watie, a Cherokee chief, was actually named a general in the Confederate Army. Many of the Confederate sympathizers in the Indian Territory were slaveholders, although all of the Five Civilized Tribes also had pro-Union factions. As for African Americans: the Confederacy, in its death throes, offered emancipation to any slave who enlisted in the army. This only happened a few weeks before the surrender at Appomattox, so a mere handful of companies were organized. In addition, a number of slaves served with the Confederate Army as servants or laborers. There are occasional accounts throughout the war of blacks fighting alongside white Confederates, but I am not personally familiar with the details of those incidents. And as a footnote, the half-Chinese sons of Chang and Eng Bunker, the original \"Siamese twins,\" fought as Confederate volunteers.", "I've never seen anything that sounds like this. 1. Where are you located? 2. Can you post a picture?", "There were mixed ideas in Europe about what to do during the ACW (American Civil War). In Britain, the elites tended to sympathize with the Confederacy because the planter aristocracy way of life coincided with the British aristocracy. The commoners, however, supported the Union. France also had pro Confederate sympathies. Russia actually had began to make closer ties to the US since they still held Alaska. A Russo-American alliance was planned in the event that Britain or France joined in with the CSA. Smaller countries usually did not care. There is a story about how Siam pledged to send a group of war elephants to the Union to which Lincoln politely declined", "There were 10,000 Civil War veterans alive in 1940, with an average age of 94. The last verifiable Confederate veteran, Pleasant Crump, died in 1951 at the rather advanced age of *104*, and he only lasted so long because he was 14 years old in 1861. I can't point to any one source disproving it, as it's exceedingly difficult to prove a negative, but I don't believe *any* Civil War veterans participated in either WWI or WWII. Joseph Wheeler, a Confederate general, did lead troops in the Spanish-American War, but he was a very old man even then, and I can find no other reference to Civil War veterans in American wars.", "Heya! You might be interested in some of the threads in our [American Civil War, European Perspectives](_URL_2_) FAQ Section, especially: * [What was the opinion of the people and workers of Northern England towards the Union or Confederate causes during the American Civil War, and the Cotton Famine that resulted from it?](_URL_1_) answered by /u/agentdcf and /u/Borimi * [How did Europeans nations reaction the U.S. Civil War?](_URL_0_) by /u/the_alaskan Hope these are helpful!", "As far as veterans of the civil war fighting in subsequent wars, the Spanish-American war was seen by both north and south as a \"great healing\" between the two. President Mckinley's administration went out of it's way to appoint ex-confederate generals to leadership positions in order to bind up old wounds. Notably, Gen. Joseph Wheeler from Alabama fought for the Confederacy and was at the battle of Shiloh. During the Spanish-American war, he volunteered and was placed in command of the cavalry division sent to Cuba. This put him in charge of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Rider outfit. As far as WW1, the youngest soldiers from the civil war would have been in their mid-to-late 50s at the beginning of America's entrance to that fight. John Clem was the last civil war veteran to retire from the US army and he did so in 1915 _URL_0_", "Probably something like this - ^rumble rumble RUMBLERUMBLERUMBLECRASHSMASH *Screams* *Oh god why, save us* Or at least I assume so.", "You could argue that the American Revolutionary was a civil war. Both sides were British. Americans tend not to think of it as a civil war, since they declared independence, but technically it is no different than what the American South did (other than succeed of course). In the American Revolutionary War there was a quite a bit of foreign involvement.", "[Here you are.](_URL_0_) You can listen to it for yourself. It's pretty interesting.", "Sorry, I'm not great at working Reddit mobile but see u/keyilan's great answer here: _URL_0_", "You might be interested in this thread: _URL_0_", "Hello! This is a great question. It has come up before in a very popular thread that might be of interest to you. Here you go. _URL_0_", "not to disuade further answers, but I've [written here](_URL_1_) about this question, and for a bit more context, [this answer](_URL_0_) talks about the post-Civil War weapons testing program, and what the US Army was looking for in a standard platform. As a quick response, both muzzle loading rifles and repeaters of all types were used in the American Civil War, and according to combat doctrine of the time, repeating rifles were not *necessarily* considered superior combat rifles, for a multiplicity of reasons.", "While not an actual answer at all, here's a neat relevant thing. [The video explains itself.](_URL_0_) A small warning, the sound gets quite unpleasant before too long edit: actually, I forgot, it's sort of a digital recreation of [this](_URL_1_), which is also pretty interesting.", "This is an awesome question. I wonder also, how close you would have to be to hear it.", "The end of the civil war was a major catalyst for confederation. The US had a large, modern, standing army more or less idle in 1865 which was seen by many as a looming threat. Confederation unified the disparate colonies versus potential US expansion/annexation.", "Someone asked this question a couple of days ago, and it got [a great answer you might take a look at.](_URL_0_) :)", "Here's a thread with the same question and a great answer in the comments: _URL_0_", "Russia did not send their regular army in, and they didn't involve their air force or other branches of their regular army. What they did do was allow volunteers from all over Russia and Europe (even some from western countries like France) to pass through their border with Ukraine and join the rebels. Many of these volunteers were indeed people from the Russian military. So were there Russian troops in Ukraine? Yes. Did the Russian army formally invade Ukraine? No. Hopefully you can see how both of these are true.", "It is worth noting that Union estimates of Confederate troop strengths were skewed during the early part of the war as Union generals wanted more funding from congress. I'll look for a reference but Pinkerton reported estimated troop strengths and then the brass modified the numbers to reflect a need for more troops and weapons. IIRC, they overestimated confederate numbers by 2-3x so they would get enough resources to guarantee victory. [Edit](_URL_0_): A famous misstep came during 1862’s Peninsula Campaign, when Pinkerton reported that the Confederate forces around Richmond were more than twice their actual size. McClellan believed the faulty intel, and despite outnumbering the rebels by a large margin, he delayed his advance and made repeated calls for reinforcements.", "Imagine you're in a jungle. This jungle is very hot and very humid. In this jungle there happens to be an alien species who hunts all manner of beasts for sport. Now imagine that this alien as the ability to see the infrared end of the spectrum; he can track you by heat radiating from your body. This creature also can blend into the foliage; cloaking itself by bending visible light. Essentially rendering it invisible to the naked eye, all but for a slight shimmer that gives it away. Now imagine now if you will, that you see this creature infront of you. It has killed most of your team and all you have is a heavy machine gun. Now scream, \"GET TO THE CHOPPAH!!\" As loud as you can. Press your tongue against the roof of your mouth close to your two front teeth and make machine gun noises. Now throw an \"R\" sound to that and you have successfully rolled your \"R's\"", "Not sure about home soil, but the US did invade Canada (then part of the British Empire) during the American Revolutionary War. _URL_0_ It failed. Also, what do you mean by a colony invading its mother country? Did the colony declare independence and then invade the mother country? At that point, it's more of a typical country vs. country war. For example, you could look at the Revolutionary War as the US versus the UK, as opposed to UK vs. rebels.", "They're called Quindar Tones: _URL_0_ and they were used to trigger the outgoing communication stations", "While Jackson may have been a very talented and capable commander, structural issues doomed the confederacy in the long run. Union advantages in food supply, manpower, transportation, and manufacturing were pretty insurmountable. Were it not for McLellan's incompetence, the war could have been won during 1862's peninsula campaign, a moment when Jackson was very much alive. From my studies of the Civil War it seems like the myth of Stonewall Jackson is a component of the lost cause myth, and turning him into a mystical, triumphant doomed figure allowed former confederates and modern day confederate sympathizers to avoid reckoning with the overwhelming long-term superiority of the Union army and the foolhardiness of fighting a war with the North" ]

[ "We had been looking for HDMI cables and found these and we were thrilled! They were very affordable compared to all the other we had found." ]

[ "These are incredibly small (which is exactly what we needed for our small nightstands). Because of that, they are so lightweight that, when turning the lamp cord-switch off, it moves the lamp on the table. Not a big deal, especially when considering the price!", "My daughter designs and sells jewelry at craft shows. We found this product at another website where the price was only a little higher but the shipping on it was $29. We found it on Amazon.com for a little less in price but only $9 in shipping cost. And it was exactly what we needed and easy to put together. It also came within just a few days.", "So far so good !! We bought this coat for my wife who is a school crossing guard for the county. She is out in the weather for hours at a time. She loves it and our only comments that aren't negative by far is...we wish the battery life was longer and the sleeves do not have heating elements in them. Otherwise the jacket keeps her toasty warm with heating elements in the torso,neck and back areas. She has it set on low or medium and gets about 2 to 3 hours of heat which is fine for her. It does what it is supposed to do and works great. The jacket is made real well and is sharp enough to wear out as everyday jacket. We have just orderd 2 extra batteries at $40 each and a dual cigarette lighter charger for $20....so for another $100 bucks we have exactly what we want and exactly what we need...", "Its not 3d view as it says.... The picture is son undefined as it says.... I have ordered several duvet covers from this manufacture and I have to say they need much better quality as it shows on the picture. The idea they have is great, but they need to improve quality. We/customers expect exactly what picture shows and better! Not less but more!", "This mat is a refreshing change from the typical black, rigid food mat. We have light oak wooden floors and selected the lighter color. It looks less obtrusive. The lipped edging is very nice and the silicone material bends to go over the nearby floor rug, as our kitchen is a tight fit location in the house. All around, this was exactly what we needed." ]

[ "A surfer hams it up for the camera while riding a small ocean wave in front of a few beach houses." ]

[ "A gull picks old french fries from a dumpster.", "A surfer is riding waves at the beach.", "A surfer is riding a wave.", "A surfer rides waves.", "A surfer is riding a wave on the ocean", "The surfer rides the wave", "A surfer is riding a tidal wave on the ocean", "A surfer is on a wave", "A surfer riding.", "A surfer is at the beach.", "A surfer is outdoors.", "A surfer is in the ocean.", "A surfer on a wave.", "A surfer catches waves.", "A surfer enjoys the waves.", "A lone surfer rides a wave in the sunset on the beach", "A surfer waits for waves on the beach.", "The surfer is outside.", "A surfer is riding a big wave.", "A surfer on the ocean.", "A surfer in a wetsuit riding a wave.", "A surfer is on the water.", "A surfer is surfing.", "A surfer surfs the ocean.", "The ocean looks green while the surfer rides.", "the surfer rode the waves", "A surfer is riding in the barrel of a wave.", "A surfer is using a surfboard.", "The surfer was riding a green wave.", "The Surfer rides a cake in the ocean.", "A surfer is sitting on the beach watching the waves.", "There are no waves in the ocean today, so the surfer is bored." ]

[ "T-Tape by John Deere Irrigation is designed for low cost drip watering of field scale crops such as potatoes and vegetables. ... T-tape can be supplied with header fittings to join a number of T-Tape rows into a block that can be watered as a single irrigation zone." ]

[ "Micro-irrigation, also called localized irrigation, low volume irrigation, low-flow irrigation, or trickle irrigation, is an irrigation method with lower pressure and flow than a traditional sprinkler system. Low volume irrigation is used in agriculture for row crops, orchards, and vineyards.", "Thread seal tape (also known as PTFE tape, Teflon tape, or plumber's tape) is a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) film tape commonly used in plumbing for sealing pipe threads. The tape is sold cut to specific widths and wound on a spool, making it easy to wind around pipe threads.", "T-Rex Mounting Tapes are weather-resistant and can withstand extreme temperatures, from -40 -200 ˚F. However, for initial application, apply tape in temperatures 50 ˚F and above.", "T-Rex Waterproof Tape is built with R-Flex Technology and provides tough waterproof adhesion under wet or dry conditions. ... The extra-thick butyl-based adhesive of T-Rex Waterproof Tape means durable repairs, even underwater and it can stretch up to 700% of its original length.", "The amount water that can be discharged through a conduit per second in a cubic feet is described as cusec. In agriculture, a rough estimate by irrigation experts is that 1 TMC water is needed each year to irrigate 10,000 acres.", "The tools used in obtaining measurements are ruler, tape measure, meter, T-square.", "If you do not have an irrigation system, protect your foundation by installing drip irrigation or soaker hose around the foundation by connecting to your outdoor faucet. Drip irrigation works under low pressure so a pressure reducer is required when attaching to a faucet.", "It impacts trade because it is not as easy for landlocked countries to receive items transported by ships. It impacts irrigation because landlocked countries don`t have easy access to water so it would be harder for them to irrigate crops and other things.", "Elastic therapeutic tape, also called kinesiology tape, Kinesio tape, k-tape, or KT, is an elastic cotton strip with an acrylic adhesive that is used with the intent of treating pain and disability from athletic injuries and a variety of other physical disorders.", "Looks like saline for wound irrigation is still available, but the IV saline is what requires a prescription (supposedly it is a different \"grade\" than irrigation saline).", "What is the main difference between the perennial system of irrigation and the basin system of irrigation? The perennial system allows for the planting of multiple crops while the basin system only allows for the planting of one main crop.", "Drip irrigation is a type of micro-irrigation system that has the potential to save water and nutrients by allowing water to drip slowly to the roots of plants, either from above the soil surface or buried below the surface. The goal is to place water directly into the root zone and minimize evaporation.", "It is believed that when applied correctly, KT Tape lifts the skin, decompressing the layers of fascia, allowing for greater movement of lymphatic fluid which transports white blood cells throughout the body and removes waste products, cellular debris, and bacteria.", "What Are t-Values? T-tests are called t-tests because the test results are all based on t-values. T-values are an example of what statisticians call test statistics. A test statistic is a standardized value that is calculated from sample data during a hypothesis test.", "Autoclave tape is an adhesive tape used in autoclaving (heating under high pressure with steam to sterilise) to indicate whether a specific temperature has been reached. Autoclave tape works by changing color after exposure to temperatures commonly used in sterilization processes, typically 121°C in a steam autoclave.", "What's the difference between Scotch® Magic™ Tape and Transparent Tape? Transparent Tape has a glossy finish, while Scotch® Magic™ Tape is frosty on the roll, but invisible on paper making it perfect for writing on in pen or pencil.", "Taping the seams with DuPont Tyvek Tape gives you the best Tyvek to Tyvek adhesion, optimal protection against air and bulk water penetration, and extra durability protection during the building's construction phase.", "MYLAR FOIL/TAPE. Zero Perm Mylar Foil provides an outstanding barrier that reduces water vapour transmission to practically zero.", "Dhekli is a traditional type of irrigation where lifting of water takes place with the help of ropes and containers to the irrigation land. Explanation: ... In which Dhekli is a traditional type of irrigation process.", "Use 1/2 inch wide tape on 1/2 inch and larger male tapered pipe threads. Wrap the tape in the direction of the thread spiral of the male pipe thread beginning with the first thread. Tape should never extend beyond or overhang the first thread. If it overhangs, the tape could shred and get into the fluid system.", "DuPont™ Tyvek® DrainWrap™ is a moisture barrier designed to provide enhanced drainage in areas subject to extreme, wind driven rain. It combines the superior air and water resistance, vapor permeability and strength of Tyvek® with a vertically grooved surface, to help channel water safely to the outside.", "According to Big Picture Agriculture, “drip irrigation conserves 50 to 70 percent more water than traditional methods while increasing crop production by 20 to 90 percent.” Colorado State University's website explains that drip irrigation provides a desirable balance of water and air in the soil that promotes plant ...", "Caught on Tape – The Admissibility of Audio Recordings in Family Law Cases. ... Although tape recordings are proof of exactly what was said, they are not always admissible as evidence in family law proceedings, especially where the person being recorded is unaware that they are on tape.", "High-density pink tape is used on water lines; yellow tape is designed for gas-line use. White tape (often low density) is used on water lines.", "The DT Swiss tubeless ready kit seals the tubeless ready rim, allowing for it to be ridden tubeless. The highly resistant adhesive tape works as a rim tape and airseal. ... DT Swiss strongly recommends the use of a high performance tire sealant, even when using tubeless specific tires.", "The film is what we started with, the video is what you are able to see on whatever type of screen you may be using. ... The video tape requires a machine in order to view it, because the visual information is an electronic signal that is recorded magnetically to a piece of tape.", "The characters and stories on The Black Tapes Podcast are fictional, but no one connected with the show is going to tell you that, because the intentional blurring of truth and fiction is part of what makes The Black Tapes so much fun.", "What is TVT and Mesh? Vaginal mesh and its predecessor TVT (trans-vaginal tape) are used to treat two different conditions in women who have given birth – urinary stress incontinence, and pelvic organ prolapse. Both affect the bladder and can make life uncomfortable for those affected.", "What Happened To Jessica In 13 Reasons Why? Jessica was on tape two in the season one for ditching Hannah as a friend. Later on the tapes we discover Jessica was raped by Bryce when she was drunk but she is persuaded that it isn't true by others on the tapes, especially Justin.", "Complications of polypropylene pubovaginal tension-free tape slings (TVT, SPARC, and others), such as erosion into the bladder or chronic pain attributed to the mesh sling are rare events; however, when they occur, it may necessitate removal of the sling.", "What do T-cells do? There are two main types of T-cells: helper T-cells and killer T-cells. Helper T-cells stimulate B-cells to make antibodies and help killer cells develop.", "National Pipe Taper Fuel (NPTF), also called Dryseal American National Standard Taper Pipe Thread, defined by ASME B1. 20.3, is designed to provide a more leak-free seal without the use of PTFE tape (often referred to by the popular brand name \"Teflon\") or another sealant compound." ]

[ "The simplest way to ensure compliance for Drupal is to install the Cookie Control module, which has been created for exactly this purpose:\n\nOn May 26th 2011 a new EU originated law came into effect that requires website owners to make significant changes to their sites and may fundamentally change the whole web browsing and shopping experience for everybody.This Cookie Law is amended privacy legislation that requires websites to obtain informed consent from visitors before they can store or retrieve any information on a computer or any other web connected device.\nCookie Control does just that, presenting users with clear information on whether cookies are present, linking to your privacy policy (where you should have specific information about what cookies are in use), and advising users on how to adjust browser settings and what cookies mean for them.\n\nThere's also the EU Cookie Compliance module:\n\nThis module intends to deal with the EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications that comes into effect in the UK on 26th May 2012.\n\nThis second one does a better job in my opinion." ]

[ "I have GA set up across the sites\n\n\nIn which case you are already serving cookies to your users. And if you are serving this content to EU users then you are \"supposed to\" display a notification of some kind to at least get implied consent.\n\n\n Would they give the same sort of data that Google Analytics give us? Or are they very different products?\n\n\nHhmmm, you need to do some research on cookies! Cookies, by themselves, don't do anything. They are simply a way of maintaining state between the client (the user) and the server (your website). By setting a cookie you can determine if/when that user last visited your website - that is all. (As well as any information that you link to that cookie in your server-side database.)", "The short answer is that no-one knows yet.\n\nThe long answer is that 3rd party cookies are a hazy area; it's not clear from the directive (PDF) who would be prosecuted for failing to obtain consent when storing 3rd party cookies.\n\nThe ICO's current interpretation and advice, published in \"Changes to the rules on using cookies...\", admits that they don't know how the directive applies to 3rd party cookies:\n\n\n \"The process of getting consent for these [3rd party] cookies is more complex and our view is that everyone has a part to play in making sure that the user is aware of what is being collected and by whom.\"\n\n\nEmphasis mine. They don't say who's responsible, only that someone is. Furthermore, they say that they're attempting to clarify these rules:\n\n\n \"[3rd party cookies] may be the most challenging area in which to achieve compliance with the new rules and we are working with industry and other European data protection authorities to assist in addressing complexities and finding the right answers.\"\n\n\nThey are expecting that these third party services\n\n\n ...will no doubt adapt to achieve compliance with the new rule...\n\n\nOne possible hint of the ICO's stance is that they list Google Analytics cookies as non-essential in their own privacy policy, and only use Google Analytics if you consent to storing cookies. I think that this sets the tone for any clarification they might offer. They may well say, 'you need to ask permission for 3rd party cookies too, because it's your choice whether you use those services or not'. But we don't know for sure yet.\n\nThis uncertainty is one reason for the compliancy deadline being extended to 25th May 2012. The best thing British webmasters concerned about the impact can do is to keep an eye on the ICO's website and wait for clarification from them. In the meantime, the rest of their advice outlined in their guidelines is worth following for cookies that you issue yourself.", "I like this one, because it's a good learning opportunity for people and applies to a broad audience. I'd also be interested in learning more about how this law applies to website owners outside of the EU.\nWhy are websites suddenly asking me about cookies?\n(The answer relates to a new law in the EU regarding privacy and tracking)", "It is not clear that the cited ToS provision in any way contradicts or attempts to override the GDPR, or any other law. A hypothetical ToS provision that said that use of the site constituted consent for all cookies, or one that limited requests to review personal info held by the site to once per year per account would pretty clearly be contrary to actual provisions of the GDPR. In an EU court, the GDPR and iuts local implementing law would prevail, in a court from elsewhere, say a US court, the decision would not be so clear cut.", "Generally, reading cookies by other sites or by a man-in-the-middle attacker is not possible, if the site is configured correctly.\nCookies are not strictly bound to the same-origin policy. Depending on their settings, they may be shared with subdomains and superdomains. If cookies settings are not marked as secure, cookies set over HTTPS are also sent over HTTP. So, if your cookie is on https://test.example.com, a man-in-the-middle attacker could create http://fake.test.example.com and read the cookie.", "As a non-EU student you can work \"120 days or 240 half days per year.\"\n\n(source)\n\nIf you're a German citizen concerned with compliance, consider asking the freelancer to incorporate as a business in the US as you would then have a business to business transaction. \n\nNevada Secretary of State: Form a Nevada or Register a Foreign (Non-Nevada) Limited-liability Company", "EU-Ukraine association treaty that has official legal texts in both English and Ukrainian, has the following translations: \n\nArticle 62:\n28. ... to determine if pests are present and/or to determine compliance with phytosanitary regulations;\n\nСтаття 62:\n28. ...для визначення наявності шкідників та/або визначення дотримання фітосанітарних правил;\n\nIf the word \"compliance\" is used in a form \"in compliance with something\", також припустимо \"відповідно до чогось\":\n\nArticle 396:\n2. ...so as to reinforce their independence, professionalism and links with other European media in compliance with European standards, including standards of the Council of Europe. \n\nСтаття 396:\n2. ...з метою посилення їхньої незалежності, професіоналізму та зв’язків з іншими європейськими ЗМІ відповідно до європейських стандартів, зокрема стандартів Ради Європи.", "Merchant gets from publisher a referal code and tries to spread his cookie with his referral code to as much users as possible. User with merchant cookie comes to publisher (or to seller authorised by main publisher) and in case of buy, publisher gets by cookie to know, which merchant sent the buyer and makes a payout.\n\nThe problem on this is the last cookie paradigm.", "The recently announced tariffs on the EU are not about national security. They are WTO sanctioned tariffs to offset EU state aid to Airbus, not tariffs that need to be justified under WTO rules.\n\n\n The US had sought to impose tariffs on about $11bn in goods. Though the WTO cut that figure to $7.5bn, Wednesday's decision still marks the largest penalty of its kind in the organisation's history.\n\n\nThe EU will likely respond in kind as per this related question. Either next year following the Boeing case finalisation, or potentially immediately using previous WTO rulings.\n\n\n Europe is also looking “at all options,” including retaliation based on old WTO dispute rulings with which the U.S. isn’t complying, though no decision has been made, Malmstrom said, adding that any response would be compliant with WTO rules.\n\n\nReuters also mentions a $4bn war chest as referenced in a linked question, which may or may not be the same compliance issue as above. \n\n\n There has been some EU talk of reviving a $4 billion war chest of tariffs from an earlier case, to be used at once, but this is sure to provoke a new debate.", "It is recognised that it is not always possible for foods to contain the exact amount of nutrients labelled, owing to natural variations and variations arising from production and length of storage. However, it is important that the actual nutrient content of foods should not deviate substantially from labelled amounts, as the consumer could otherwise be misled.\n \n As a result, the European Commission has drawn up, in collaboration with EU Member States, guidance on the setting of tolerances for nutrient values. The document sets tolerances for:\n \n \n the nutrition declaration under EU FIC;\n compliance with the levels of nutrients and other substances specified in Regulation (EC) No. 1924/2006 on nutrition and health claims;\n controlling the levels of vitamins and minerals specified under Regulation (EC) No. 1925/2006 on the addition of vitamins and minerals; and\n vitamins and minerals in food supplements.\n \n\n\n(Source: Technical guidance on nutrition labelling - UK Department of Health, Page 20: Free PDF)\n\nThe following tables are from the EU\n\n\n GUIDANCE DOCUMENT FOR COMPETENT AUTHORITIES FOR THE CONTROL OF COMPLIANCE WITH EU LEGISLATION ON:\n \n Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 October 2011 on the provision of food information to consumers, amending Regulations (EC) No 1924/2006 and (EC) No 1925/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council, and repealing Commission Directive 87/250/EEC, Council Directive 90/496/EEC, Commission Directive 1999/10/EC, Directive 2000/13/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, Commission Directives 2002/67/EC and 2008/5/EC and Commission Regulation (EC) No 608/2004\n \n and\n \n Council Directive 90/496/EEC of 24 September 1990 on nutrition labelling of foodstuffs\n \n and\n \n Directive 2002/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 June 2002 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to food supplements\n \n with regard to the setting of tolerances for nutrient values declared on a label\n\n\n(Source PDF)\n\n\n\n\n\nHow this will be affected with Brexit when the UK leaves the EU is anyone's guess, although to start with, EU laws will be integrated into UK law to start with until the decisions are made by parliament on which laws to remove. (Source)", "are there any GDPR considerations that must be in place when an EU company stores personal information from citizens outside of the EU?\n\n\nAbsolutely. The territorial scope of the GDPR is specified at Article 3:\n\n\n Article 3\n \n Territorial scope\n \n \n This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data in the context of the activities of an establishment of a controller or a processor in the Union, regardless of whether the processing takes place in the Union or not.\n This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data of data subjects who are in the Union by a controller or processor not established in the Union, where the processing activities are related to:\n \n (a) the offering of goods or services, irrespective of whether a payment of the data subject is required, to such data subjects in the Union; or\n \n (b) the monitoring of their behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place within the Union.\n This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data by a controller not established in the Union, but in a place where Member State law applies by virtue of public international law.\n \n\n\nAs specified in point 1, the regulation applies to controllers and processors located in the EU. There is no exemption of personal data based on the data subject's nationality or location.", "\"Implementation Status: Currently, HSTS state is cleared by New Identity, but we don't defend against the creation of these cookies between New Identity invocations\" https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/", "Sitecore uses cookies for authentication. If an authenticated user's cookies are passed to the GraphQL API, it will respect that. If no authentication is present from cookies, any impersonation user set on the API key will be used.", "There are two relevant EU laws: GDPR and ePrivacy.\n\nUsing Google Analytics does not require consent as far as the GDPR is concerned. The processing can instead be based on legitimate interest, but you do have to offer opt-out and must use suitable security measures, for example by signing the data processing agreement with Google. Alternatively, an argument is possible that the collected data doesn't qualify as personal data – but I don't think that argument is correct.\n\nThe ePrivacy directive is more tricky. It is not directly enforceable law. Instead, directives are implemented through member state law. As a result, there can be subtle differences between member states. What one data protection authority allows is not necessarily relevant in another country.\n\nePrivacy requires you to collect consent when you access information on the user's device, for example when you read or write cookies or use similar technologies, regardless of whether the information is personal data in the sense of the GDPR. The only exception is when the access is strictly necessary for your application – but that doesn't cover analytics. This ePrivacy requirement is the source of all the cookie consent banners you see on the web.\n\nGoogle Analytics stores a Client ID on the user's device, which is used to combine separate events into a session or user profile. Optionally, this Client ID can be linked with a User ID, which lets you track a signed-in user across devices.\n\nBut storing/acessing this Client ID requires consent under ePrivacy.\n\nIf you want to avoid asking for consent, you must disable storage of the Client ID. On the web, this can be reached by setting 'storage': 'none' for analytics.js or 'client_storage': 'none' for gtag.js. I use this approach on my personal website, with the result that “pageviews” and “sessions” are now synonymous. I am not sure what the equivalent would be on mobile, but the same concerns apply.\n\nI assume (but do not know for sure) that the consent requirement only applies to persistently stored data. Keeping a transient User ID in memory is likely fine. That would let you correlate events into a session while the app remains open, without having to ask for consent.", "GDPR compliance by itself is largely a legal issue which has no place here (and likely anywhere else on SE). This would include questions of the type \"I want to do X. Will this be enough to be GDPR compliant?\". \n\nHowever, the linked question is concerned with a technical problem (just motivated by GDPR) and I believe it could be topical here. That said, I could imagine that this could also be asked on SO if this would be part of a larger CRM environment.", "Stack exchange is a US-based company. While the General Data Protection Regulation (or GDPR) is an EU-wide law that protects Europeans with regards to the processing of their personal data, including data processed in the US, I would be not be inclined to believe that all EU regulations have a blanket requirement to be upheld in the US, just as US regulations, (aside from any specific laws that might protect US citizens globally,) are required to be upheld anywhere besides the US.", "Yes, setting a cookie to remember that cookies were declined is the most appropriate approach. No, you usually shouldn't send this info to your backend.\nMany cookies require consent because the ePrivacy directive (closely related to the GDPR) says that you can only access information on a user device if (a) that access is strictly necessary for the service requested by the user, or (b) if the user consented to the access. Analytics are not strictly necessary in this sense, so analytics cookies always require consent.\nWhen declining consent, the user is presumably asking to not be bothered by further consent popups for the forseeable time (e.g. 6–12 months). In fact, bothering a user on every page could be considered a dark pattern, and would call in question whether any consent given after such pestering could even be valid.\nThus, there is a strong argument that setting a cookie to remember “consent declined” or “consent withdrawn” is strictly necessary to perform the service requested by the user.\nSetting a cookie is usually the least invasive way to manage consent status. For a logged-in user, storing consent status on the backend could also be very sensible. Persisting consent status about a not-logged-in user is a bit pointless, and I don't think the GDPR requires this in any case – this might even go against the data minimization principle. You don't necessarily have to record or persist consent status, but you have to be able to “demonstrate” that consent has been given if you rely on that consent. That includes demonstrating both the aspect that this user has given consent (which could benefit from explicit records), but also the more general aspect that this consent was obtained in a valid manner.", "Did you try the documentation? https://docs.experitest.com/display/TC/Cookies\n\ndriver.manage().addCookie( new Cookie(\"feature\", \"on\") )", "Tem uma configuração dentro do arquivo app/Config/core.php para alterar o cookie de sessão do dominio:\n\nConfigure::write('Session', array(\n 'defaults' =&gt; 'php',\n 'ini' =&gt; array(\n 'cookie_domain' =&gt; '.example.com'\n )\n));\n\n\nEu fiz o teste e funcionou corretamente.", "In general Tor Browser saves the cookies which come from the originating site and deletes them when you close the browser. You can also click on \"New Identity\" which will also delete all your cookies.\n\nYou can find out about the cookie behaviour when you enter about:config into the URL bar and search for the term \"cookie\".\n\nOne of the central points is the setting Network.cookie.cookieBehavior. This controls how the browser allows cookies. Currently it is set to 1 which means \"Only cookies from the originating server are allowed\". \n\nFurthermore Network.cookie.lifetimePolicy is set to 2 which means that cookies are deleted at the end of the session.\n\nThe developers of Tor Browser have a design document where they describe their policy regarding cookies and other tracking technologies. You'll find further details there.", "You can try following scenarios:\n\n\nDisabling cookies: Disable all cookies and attempt to use the site's major functions\nCorrupting cookies: Manually edit the cookie in notepad and change the parameters with some random values\nCookies encryption: Sensitive information like passwords and usernames should be encrypted before it is sent to our computer\nCookie testing with multiple browser: Check your website page is writing \nthe cookies properly on different browser as expected\nChecking the deletion from your web application page:\nSelectively rejecting cookies: Delete all the cookies for the websites and see how the website reacts to it\nAccess to cookies: Cookies written by one website should not be accessible by others\nNo overuse of cookies: If the application under test is a public website, there should not be overuse of cookies\nTesting with different setting: Testing should be done properly to check that website is working well with different cookie setting\nCategorize cookies separately: Cookies should not be kept in the same category of the viruses, spam or spyware\n\n- Source guru99", "If the companies ignore the laws of the European Union (EU), then the EU can fine them. The United States (US) may refuse to collect on the fines, but even so, the example company is doing business in the EU. \n\nAmazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, and Amazon.de collect money in the EU via credit cards. Those credit cards bill EU banks. The EU can of course prevent money from being taken out of EU banks. Similarly, Google, Facebook, etc. sell advertising to EU customers. Again, the EU can block that money from reaching them. And of course, those companies have operations in the EU. The EU could close those operations. \n\nIn theory, a company could be 100% US with no EU income and ignore the EU rules. But such a company also has no need to provide service in the EU. Because if it can't sell products or advertising in the EU, why does it need to be there? Transnational corporate advertising? Hint: those companies do business in the EU and are accessible to EU sanctions. \n\nAnd of course, that's all assuming that the US does not collect on the fines. The US might collect the fine for the EU. After all, it may want to collect a fine against an EU company some day. In fact, there may already be treaties covering that exact issue.", "I tested again the cookie set on a visual force page running on Safari and to cookie seems to set correctly.\n\n\n\nI didn't use managed package to test so maybe there is still a difference there, but could you test it in the developer org where you build your package and run it there does it give the same result?\n\nThis is the code i used (standaard workbook help article code)\n\npublic with sharing class testCookieController {\n\npublic testCookieController(){\n\n Cookie counter = ApexPages.currentPage().getCookies().get('counter');\n\n // If this is the first time the user is accessing the page,\n // create a new cookie with name 'counter', an initial value of '1',\n // path 'null', maxAge '-1', and isSecure 'false'.\n if (counter == null) {\n counter = new Cookie('counter','1',null,-1,false);\n } else {\n // If this isn't the first time the user is accessing the page\n // create a new cookie, incrementing the value of the original count by 1\n Integer count = Integer.valueOf(counter.getValue());\n counter = new Cookie('counter', String.valueOf(count+1),null,-1,false);\n }\n\n ApexPages.currentPage().setCookies(new Cookie[]{counter});\n\n\n}", "A soft Brexit is one with the least change to the current situation. So, it would include becoming a member of the European Economic Area, like Norway. Whilst the UK would no longer be in the EU, there would still be freedom of movement, and compliance to many EU regulations would be required. EEA membership has been ruled out as an option but would represent the softest of 'soft' Brexit.\n\nA hard Brexit is one where the UK disassociates itself completely from all EU institutions. There would be no payment of any sort of 'membership fee', and no agreement where the European Court of Justice is the arbiter.\n\nThose in favour of a soft Brexit are intending to trade by aligning closely with the EU. Those in favour of a hard Brexit point out that the UK now has the power to negotiate its own trade deals, and that it's not in the interest of the EU to erect trade barriers between the EU and the UK (even though they would be a normal consequence of leaving the trade bloc). \n\nThe government will negotiate the deal with the European Commission; it's hard to see how it could be otherwise. Parliament has been promised a vote on the resulting agreement but the consequence of it rejecting the deal that has been agreed would be a no-deal Brexit, which would be hard by default.", "I'll attempt to point you in the right directions here, while of course please be aware that it's merely a very very general answer. Even though European legislation is currently \"harmonised\" via a Directive that mandates implementation into national laws, it still has its implementation peculiarities.\nAlso, as usual, here goes the warning that this answer is for informational purposes and not for specific legal advice. So if you really need to further investigate, it is advisable to seek the assistance of a lawyer specialised in this particular practice of law. To some extent iubenda might be helpful, which is the company I work for and which is the main reason for some of my background/experience in the area.\n\nLet's start with the simplest and most likely option: the UK. \n\nThe UK, being part of the EU takes a lot of their privacy related rules from European directives. The so called EU Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC has been implemented in March 2000 with the Data Protection Act 1998. Enforcement falls to the ICO, the Information Commissioner’s Office.\n\nIn general, they advise to inform about these things at least: \n\n\nmake sure people know who you are,\nwhat you intend to do with their information,\nwho it will be shared with or disclosed to\n\n\nDepending on the circumstances you may decide to go beyond the basic requirements of the law, for example by telling people:\n\n\nIf you intend to pass information on, the name of the organisations involved and - details of how they will use the information\nhow long you or other organisations intend to keep the information\nwhether replies to questions are mandatory or voluntary\nthe consequences of not providing information - for example, non-receipt of a benefit;\nwhether the information will be transferred overseas;\nwhat are you doing to ensure the security of personal information;\nabout their rights and how they can exercise them - for example, the fact that a person can obtain a copy of their personal information or object to direct marketing;\nwho to contact if they want to complain or know more about how their information will be used; \nand about the right to complain to the Information Commissioner if there is a problem\n\n\nThe above is based on a manual released by the ICO. You must also be aware however, that within a year new rules will be introduced based on a real pan-European regulation called the GDPR.\n\nNow that we have the main structure together, we can see about the cookies. \n\nTechnical cookies\n\nTechnical cookies famously don't require the users' consent ahead of time. However it's definitely good practice to still point that out within your privacy policy or cookie policy (likely also required). \nHowever since you're making use of cookies outside of the absolutely necessary - Google Analytics - you're required to inform about cookies anyway.\n\nWhen setting cookies you're required to \n- tell people that the cookies are there,\n- explain what the cookies are doing, and\n- obtain their consent to store a cookie on their device.\n\nThe ICO provides an example section for wording:\n\nOur website uses four cookies. A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers\nthat we put on your computer if you agree. These cookies allow us to \ndistinguish you from other users of the website which helps us to provide you \nwith a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to \nimprove our site.\n\nThe cookies we use are ‘analytical’ cookies. They allow us to recognise and \ncount the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around the site when\nthey’re using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for\nexample by making sure users are finding what they need easily. Read more\nabout the individual analytical cookies we use and how to recognise them [link]\n\n\nI'm linking you to the ICO's cookie guidance document if you want those deeper insights.\n\nGoogle Analytics: Cookie blocking for more intrusive types\n\nThe implementation of the cookie law still vary heavily, the ICO's stance can be counted among the very permissive ones. There are more strict systems like the one by the French CNIL, Spain, Italy and more.\n\nBased on those you must block these cookies (Google Analytics) before the user has given you their consent. In Germany and other countries the IP anonymisation is table stakes. It must be done by default.\n\nFrance, for instance, allows Piwik to be there without the need of initial consent, while Google Analytics needs consent. Others might be more permissive.\n\nIf you run that business across many countries, it might make sense to just take the strictest approach: block these cookies before user consent (we've built something to help with cookie management at iubenda). \n\nAnother topic entirely might be the newly developed Privacy Shield, which I personally wouldn't be able to get into more deeply.\n\nHope this all helps.", "The StackExchange \"user\" cookie (exact name varies by site) is Http-Only. Thus, it is not exposed (by compliant browsers, which are basically all of them now) in document.cookies.\n\nWe do this to prevent the classic javascript injection -> stolen user credential attack.", "All details can be found in the bug report #13332.\n\nThe problems comes from the Secure Cookie Management of NoScript. The default installation leaves this to false, while Tor Browser sets it to true. This way not all cookie go along their way and the user can't login.\n\nThe NoScript FAQ recommends to either disable Secure Cookie Managment for this site or to investigate further and send the authors of NoScript a report.", "Not using the Secure flag on cookies is a critical security issue, regardless of whether the site is actually available over HTTP or not. A man-in-the-middle (MITM) network attacker can very easily steal them if they aren't flagged Secure:\n\n\nAttacker finds a user who is logged into the target site.\nAttacker waits for the user to browse to literally any site over unsecured HTTP (it doesn't need to be related to the target site in any way).\nAttacker injects a simple, invisible element into the HTTP response that will trigger an HTTP request (for example, &lt;script src=\"http://targetsite.com/\"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;, even though the root page is presumably not a script).\nThe user's browser will attempt to connect to the target site over HTTP, which the attacker can complete on the server's behalf (the server never even sees the request, so it doens't matter that it won't respond to HTTP requests).\nThe user's browser will send the request, including all non-Secure-flagged cookies for the vulnerable site; the attacker can easily harvest these.\n\n\nFor modern browsers, this attack could be thwarted by using HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) or possibly the new SameSite flag on cookies, but a server that isn't using Secure on its session cookies probably isn't using any of these other security measures either, and in any case they wouldn't protect users with old browsers.\n\nI checked Globalscape's knowledge base, and didn't see any way to require the Secure flag on the cookies universally. The scenario described, where the user is redirected from HTTP to HTTPS for login and then back to HTTP, is NOT secure and never should be allowed (Firesheep, a simple Firefox extension that automated attacks against such sites, was released nearly 8 years ago!)\n\nIf Globalscape is still allowing that behavior, it should be considered a serious security bug in their product, and your compliance vendor is absolutely correct that it's not suitable for use with payment card info. On the other hand, you claim that the EFT server is only accessible over HTTPS, in which case (per the company's claim) then the scanner shouldn't be able to trigger the \"special case\" where the cookies are sent insecurely.\n\nWithout more information (does EFT Server set the Secure flag if accessed over HTTPS? If so, why was the scanner able to get insecure cookies, given that you say the server isn't available over HTTP? If not, there may be no short-term fix), I can't really tell you what will be needed to fix the issue in the short term. In the long term, you need to either convince Globalscape to bring their web security into this decade, isolate it behind a front-end that is written with security in mind, or change vendors.", "When things like YSlow and Page Speed tell you to set up cookie-less domains, what they actually mean is serve media from a domain where you won't be setting any, or have not set any (globally) in the past. Sometimes this can be accomplished by using sub-domains, such as media.domain.com, or static.domain.com, however if you set a cookie on domain.com that applies to the domain as a whole &ndash; a cookie for *.domain.com &ndash; then this cookie will be sent by the client back to the server on every request for every domain associated with domain.com. This includes all sub-domains. \n\nThe global cookie becomes an issue if you decide to forgo the use of www. on your domains. Without a specific sub-domain to set a cookie for, all cookies must be set for *.domain.com in order for them to work.\n\nThis global cookie issue is why you will see static media served from places like ytimg.com on YouTube. ytimg.com will never serve dynamic content that can set cookies, which means no cookie for will ever be sent from the client back to the server when these domains are part of HTTP requests.\n\nIf you are certain that you will never have a cookie set for *.domain.com then you can use a sub-domain for your needs. Be aware that most of the time if you integrate with another site or service via Javascript, they will set global domain cookies.\n\nIn Apache (and I'm sure every other webserver) you can set or unset headers before requests are answered. This will not fix the issue of the client sending the cookie to your server, but it will keep your domains from ever sending or initially setting cookies. Only a problem if you serve content that isn't static from your cookie-less domains, which defeats their purpose. \n\nHeader unset Cookie\nHeader unset Set-Cookie \n\n\nThis will unset the headers for existing cookies and for creating new cookies. Again, only an issue if you serve content from your static domains that could potentially set a cookie. Place this in your site or virtualhost's configuration (which depending on your OS, server, and version could be any number of places).", "Yes, Tor Browser disables Third Party Cookies:\n\n\n The Cross-Origin Identifier Unlinkability design requirement is satisfied through first party isolation of all browser identifier sources. First party isolation means that all identifier sources and browser state are scoped (isolated) using the URL bar domain. This scoping is performed in combination with any additional third party scope. When first party isolation is used with explicit identifier storage that already has a constrained third party scope (such as cookies and DOM storage), this approach is referred to as \"double-keying\".\n\n\nIt also provides the New Identity feature, which when used will remove all cookies from the session. Cookies also do not persist between sessions, as such you can use this to unlink your browsing.\n\nAlso cookies are entirely unrelated to any \"virus\".\n\nRelated questions:\n\nWhy does not Tor Browser disable cookies completly?\n\nCan site.com attach (and access) identifying cookies to TorBrowser session if JavaScript disabled?", "In the US, these are called \"Know your Customer\", and \"Anti Money Laundering\" (KYC/AML) laws and is enforced by FINCEN (financial crimes enforcement network) in the US for any businesses that qualifies as a \"Money Service Business\" or \"Money Transmitter\". \n\nThis guidance published on March 2013, http://fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/html/FIN-2013-G001.html , makes it clear that Bitcoin exchanges must comply with existing regulation for KYC/AML.", "That is not a best practice, but some sites do this, particularly US or other non-European sites which are not attempting to comply with the GDPR. If the site is required to comply with the GDPR (because it is in Europe or has users who are in Europe), it depeends what lawful basis it is relying on. \n\nIf the basis is consent, then consent must be freely granted and may not be made a condition of site use/access unless the site cannot function without the information or cookie. \n\nHowever, if some other lawful basis is being relied on, hen the site need not obtain consent, and may simply notify users that cookies are being set or read by the site." ]

[ "Teh flowers were beautiful and last well. They arrived on time,and I would order them again and I would recommend the flowers to anyone." ]

[ "The best EVOO under $40. We live in the Bay Area where there are tons of artisan producers of EVOO and this stuff is by far the best in its price range. There are better ones for 50+ for this size but this oil has a smooth taste, silky in texture and a wonderfully fruity and fresh bouquet and taste. Your mouth will definitely love this! Also rated #1 by America's Test Kitchen and Consumer Reports.", "I ordered a LARGE birthday bouquet (that was supposed to come with a birthday balloon) for my daughter's birthday. Did not show up until almost 6:00 pm day of delivery. Was most definitely not a large bouquet. Was a small bouquet in a cup that said \"get real\" on the front (seriously, lol), and no balloon. Called 1-800 flowers, and was hung up on twice. Once by someone named Anne and again by someone named Carl. Finally got someone named Tracy. She said she would send another bouquet out the next day (UH, LITTLE LATE, NOT DAUGHTER'S BIRTHDAY ANYMORE). Sent another one, better, but still not what ordered. Still was not a LARGE bouquet (as stated in the description), and no balloon. She had also said she would refund my full amount paid, she only refunded half of it. Was not a good experience AT ALL, and it was for my daughter's 16TH birthday, I wanted it to be special for her. Not at all happy with this company. I will never order from them again, and especially not if it is for a special occasion. AWFUL EXPERIENCE.", "Open the package. Take a whiff. You'll never look back! It is more than just a smell. It is an aroma - a bouquet!<br />I suspect that tellicherries are a bit softer than other black peppers, and don't work as well in all standard grinders. None-the-less, they are worth the extra effort. Amazon is, by far, the best way to make this purchase.", "Dr Brown's Cel Ray soda is the pot of proverbial gold waiting at the end of the rainbow. My favorite part of drinking Celray soda is the fresh, slightly peppery, celery bouquet that greets you upon opening the can. For me, this is one of those rare culinary treats in the world, and I have traveled the world.<br /><br />Dr Brown's Cel Ray soda is best enjoyed freshly poured into a 12 oz glass filled with fresh dry ice cubes. Lifting the glass to your face to feel the tingle of the fine spray of escaping carbonation, you inhale the celery bouquet, as if tasting a fine wine. Unlike wines however, the refreshing bouquet and taste of Dr Brown's Cel Ray is always a dependable and repeatable experience. The increasingly difficult part is unfortunately, that it's becoming more and more difficult to find, even in New York. Someone needs to contact the company and find out why this is so.<br /><br />5 star product!", "Upon opening the sealed bag, I was struck by an unpleasant scent. Looking at the ingredients I saw, in addition to the black tea and rosebuds, a \"natural flavor\" additive. I believe this additive is the culprit to ruining what should have been a delightful bouquet to my nose. Then I brewed this tea, and could still taste that additive, but overall the tea was tasty. I hope the Davidson family reads our reviews because I am certain that, if they would just refrain from adding the \"natural flavor,\" I and others would find this tea to be superb, and in keeping with the other teas I have come to enjoy from Davidson's. For example, upon opening their Darjeeling loose tea, as well as their Assam loose tea, my nose is struck with a lovely bouquet ~ this is what one wants to experience from superb teas. I will look forward to Davidson's responding to my (and other customer's) suggestion re: this nasty flavor additive. I've enjoyed tea with rose petals while in India, and they did not put anything other than the tea and the dried rose petals.", "Although I did not see them, as Mom lives in another state, she called to tell me she received \"the most beautiful bouquet of tulips she'd ever seen.\"", "These olives are superb! Our family loves olives. We have tried many grocery and specialty store brands, but these are the best.<br />Do not expect them to taste like regular canned grocery store olives. The oil they are cured in lends a very aromatic, almost fruity/floraly bouquet. You may also find they taste a bit more salty than your typical olives. However, if you are a true olive lover, all of these elements will just be \"positives\" for you! The price is great for the amount of olives you get. We will keep them coming.", "I ordered this bouquet to be delivered on my daughter's birthday, August 17. Instead it was delivered August 1 - 16 days early. The package said \"Keep Cool\" and it was hot and the candy was melted. There also were not any cookies as stated in the product description. This was EXTREMELY disappointing.", "This is a great tea on its own or in a alcoholic concoction (Hot Toddy etc). The flavor profile is great and has an excellent bouquet. I would definitely recommend picking up some of this Cinnamon spice tea for holiday festivities as well. Note that like most Dilmah tea's the flavor profile is delicate and subtle as its goal is not to overpower so to those expecting a very strong flavor like those present in Tazo tea's then be warned.", "I LOVE this flavor and am unable to find it anywhere in my local stores. the last time i found it was in New York, until i found it here. it is a light bodied tea with mild berry flavor, not strong, just right. i only brew it for about 2 minutes per cup though. if i do it longer, it seems to change the flavor bouquet a little.", "I didn't think that this Copper Moon Panama Bouquete Coffee would be all that great because of the low price, but low and behold it fooled me good. This is an excellet whole bean coffee, real nice roast that delivers a great mellow taste. Good coffee all around, sure will recomend to other coffee lover's out there. Thank you Amazon.com for another excellent product at a super low price.", "Turbinado's Raw Sugar is the best out of the many other brands I've tried...This product adds a natural sweet taste, especially whith coffee...Not overpowering, just a smooth natural flavor...", "Moroccan Pomegranate Red is a nice break from hibiscus rosehip flavored fruit teas. The bouquet is wonderfully fruity. After steeping you have a ruby brew that tastes great. The flavor of pomegranate is very authentic without the bitter taste of pomegranate seed. Rooibos provides a healthful and mild base for the fruit flavor without any sourness or ashiness. Altogether a satisfying tea.<br /><br />Celestial Seasonings gets extra points for their packaging: they utilize 100% natural recycled paperboard in their boxes and they don't package each tea bag individually. Instead they use a system of a waxed paper bag inside the box that stays shut when you fold it. It keeps the bags fresh and utilizes less packaging than individually wrapping each bag. The art they use on each box is beautiful as are the quotes and information they put on every surface.<br /><br />Quote from the box:<br /><br />\"One that would have the fruit must climb the tree.\" Thomas Fuller", "Even though this isn't truly natural in the sense that other natural peanut butters are (containing only 100% peanuts), it is still healthier than your average grocery store peanut butter. But, the best part of Skippy Natural is the taste: I can't ever go back to the typical JIF-style peanut butter.", "The bouquet of this brewed tea is floral-fruity. The flavor is sweet--fruit and vanilla. I don't get a strong pear flavor but in my opinion that is a good thing!! I enjoyed this tea. I hope they come up with a decaf version since this has 50 mg of caffeine--too much for me!<br /><br />Celestial Seasonings gets extra points for their packaging: they utilize 100% natural recycled paperboard in their boxes and they don't package each tea bag individually. Instead they use a system of a waxed paper bag inside the box that stays shut when you fold it. It keeps the bags fresh and utilizes less packaging than individually wrapping each bag. They put a caffeine meter on the box to compare this tea with cola and coffee beverages-this tea has 50 mg of caffeine compared to 90 in a cup of drip coffee. This tea is reported as having a high level of antioxidants-higher than green tea. The level of antioxidants and information about them would be a good addition. The art they use on each box is beautiful as are the quotes and information they put on every surface.", "Natural value is the best cat food out there, no nasty fillers and by-products. Amazon's cost is so low for this quality product and best of all my two cats just LOVE it!", "I was looking for tootsie pops to replenish my supply. I am diabetic so when I found these miniature pops, I thought it would be a good thing. I mean, there were 200 of them! Turned out that my friend wanted some to, so I ordered a bag for him. He wants to stop smoking and that it would be a good idea to have something to put in his mouth. After a few pops, I realized that I would never get through all of them. What would I do? Around holiday time, I came up with an idea what to do with then. I decided to make holiday bouquets with them. I bunched up 4 lollipops (different flavors) and taped them together and tied a ribbon around them and curled the ends. It looked like a bouquet of flowers except with lollipops! I made 52 of them and gave them as gifts to the nursing home staff where I am living. Everyone was so touched by the unique gifts? They were easy to make and so affordable! It all worked out in the end!", "Rub was good & best part is that ingredients are all natural! No MSG or other garbage needed to make it taste great!", "This is the best cat food I gae ever tried on my cat, She loves it, it smells all natural and is good for her.", "Taylors of Harrogate offer a variety of teas. These may be had in tea bags or in the loose leaf form and packed in gorgeous tins. From Yorkshire Gold, ideal for cold winter afternoons, to the classic Earl Grey, Tayors' teas are top of the line. China Rose Petal tea is perfect blend of a black tea with a light addition of a few rose petals. The bouquet is sublime. The taste terrific. Strongly recommend. A super gift or a treat to give yourself.", "When it comes to a&ntilde;ejo tequilas, it's time to put your shot glasses away and use a vessel that best accentuates the color, flavor, and bouquet of the pricey aged spirit you're about to experience. Like wine, a&ntilde;ejo tequila is aged to give it characteristics you'll want to enjoy. The slight bowl of the Riedel Ouverture helps direct the sweet vanilla and cinnamon notes to your nose, and is perfect for sipping to fully appreciate the unique qualities of the particular, and likely limited, batch of a&ntilde;ejo in which you've invested. Yes, they are fragile. They're made of glass. Treat them with care. I've run mine through my dishwasher several times with no problems, but I'm always cautious not to crowd them and to remove them slowly. These glasses were a tiny investment compared to what a bottle of high quality tequila costs, and I strongly recommend them to anyone out to deepen their tequila experience.", "I use to take valarian root pill before I went to bed, but always felt it was a little too sedating. With this tea, it's a lot milder (the differance is like a Lullaby vs. a sledge hammer). It also has a nice aroma, bouquet, and flavor. I like to mix this with blueberry, or (when I'm under the weather) Echenacia tea (Celestials wellness tea).<br /><br />One word of warning. If you're on any medications for anxiety, depression, etc., you may want to stick with regular Sleepytime.", "OK folks: I have to tell you I'm one of these people that tries every kind of black cherry soda I can find. Once upon a time, in the days before colas and Dr. Pepper were totally dominant in the market, and before the days of Mountain Dew, Black Cherry sodas were plentiful. It's harder to find them now. And if you were fan of black cherry, some sodas were super artificial in taste, and others tasted more natural. The Switch beverages are among the best on the market and the good news is: The Switch Black Cherry is one of their best flavors. The only bad news is that The Switch cans are small and you'll want to have more and more. It's natural tasting, has good, natural ingredients and it gives you a natural energy boost. And if you haven't tried black cherry...the BEST WAY is to try it drinking The Switch Black Cherry. You'll become hooked. Take THAT colas and Dr. Pepper!", "This coffee is excellent! The best brew-for-the-buck I've found: smooth and rich flavor, delightful aroma. Adding a touch of cream and some natural brown cane sugar--plus some ice cubes--makes the best iced coffee I've ever had!", "****<br />Tazo's Calm Herbal Infusion is a nice chamomile tea. I taste the chamomile and some flavorings, and they are not unpleasant, just hard to pin down as to what they are besides the chamomile. In general I'm not a big fan of tea with flavorings added, preferring the subtleness and authentic taste of the real thing.<br /><br />The ingredients in Calm are: chamomile flowers, hibiscus flowers, spearmint, lemongrass, rose petals, blackberry leaves, safflowers, peppermint, sarsaparilla, lemon balm, licorice and natural flavors. It is caffeine-free.<br /><br />Tazo is an interesting company that makes only super premium teas. They are socially responsible, based in Portland, and have the motto, \"The Reincarnation of Tea\". Tazo is owned by Starbucks. Their web site is fun and quirky, with a Zen-type focus, definitely worth checking out. It is unclear, though, from their web site, how many of their ingredients are organic or kosher, and they do use some \"natural flavors\" in their teas--this wording seems a little vague for a super premium tea.<br /><br />On the paper tea packet, Tazo writes, \"a soothing blend of chamomile blossoms and other relaxing herbs.\" On their web site, Tazo describes the flavor profile of Calm as \"creamy, floral, minty, toasty, sweet, honey-like. As the name gently implies, Tazo Calm has a lovely floral bouquet with an apple-like flavor and distinct toasty notes. Naturally sweet in a nice light way, with a smooth finish\". Tazo describes the aroma as \"minty, hay like, rose\". I don't taste all of these various flavors, but I do taste the chamomile, and it is fine, not overwhelming or as artificial tasting as several of the other Tazo teas I've sampled.<br /><br />I would rate this tea, and Tazo in general, as good---better than premium teas like Stash or Celestial Seasonings---but not as good as other tea companies that feature only natural flavorings like Numi, which is why Tazo Calm gets only four stars.<br />****", "I love to make simple roasts with gravy for mashed potatoes, bread stuffing or Yorkshire Pudding - Gravy Master and a touch of dissolved corn starch in stock are the secret to success with any of your pan drippings. Gravy master is not a thickener, it adds color, clarity and flavor to your gravies. It is a blend of caramelized vegetables, no meat products. I think the flavor is superior to Bisto and Kitchen Bouquet and it gives sauces a better natural browned color. My significant other is working on maintaining a vegetarian diet but loves gravy - I'm going to give this a go with Kitchen Basics Vegetable Stock, mushrooms and carmelized shallots and see if I can come up with a great gravy for him and I bet it will be good. This product wasn't available on the west coast for many years - I used to bring home 4-6 bottles in my suitcase from trips back east. Now I've been able to find it online and even in stores in California. Sorry to see it is no longer made in Branford, Connecticut - where it was a small family business for years - looks like the product has gained a new manufacturer and distribution though and maintained it's superior quality.", "I paid for the product and the shipping and i paid to return it as the bottle was open and part of the foil top had loosened as (i guess) it had not been packaged well, there was kitchen bouquet everywhere. I contacted them and luckily i had saved the sticky box because they wanted it back. So i sent the whole mess back asap. At my expense, no apology or refund of my money for return postage nor even a darn coupon......hmm not even an apology.<br /><br />Rosemary Blazek", "i would like to share an afficionado's take on this specific item. through the years i have tried several brands of espresso coffee which i prepare as 'caf&eacute; con leche', espresso with frothed milk and sweetener. (i use honey). caf&eacute; bustelo, consider i, as one of the best. had i my druthers, i would have purchased the decaffeinated version. this, however, was not available at a reasonable price. incidentally, decaffeinated coffee isn't: it simply contains one half the usual amount of caffeine, while preserving the full bouquet of taste and aroma, if properly roasted. i had ordered, through amazon, the 4 ten-ounce bricks, not the cans, which, for some reason, are currently shown as unavailable. they arrived in a timely manner, with a 'best by' date one year and eleven months into the future. to my taste, another top brand is 'el aguilar'. i don't like 'pilon'. there are quite a few other brands of cuban or espresso coffee on the market which i am yet to sample. maybe you'll be the one to try them as well.<br />enjoy!", "This is something to always keep in your cupboard, this can be used to fix most crumbled beef recipes, such as stuffed peppers, meat loaf, chili, taco's etc. When seasoned properly and (I use beef bouillon or banquet bouquet), follow directions on package. This will cut your fat from meals, you can also use half ground beef and half TVP. The next day it tastes even better, and most people can't tell the difference. Just use your imagination and enjoy.<br />I found this on Amazon at a very good price!", "I have a bag of Orville Redenbacher's Natural Popcorn every night. I have done this for years (I'm 76). Orville's Popcorn is the best. I love it.", "Some great tasting tea with antioxidants and naturally no caffeine! The best I've ever tasted with the exception of oolong but that one has caffeine.", "Tulips are clever. You can arrange them just so in a vase and find out next day that half of them are sprawling over the lip of the vase, possibly even getting entangled. They're not fatigued -- they just have a tendency to follow the light. Tulips are not only heliotropic (following the sun's arc when possible) but phototrophic (they keep growing under almost any kind of available light).<br /><br />When I received my most recent bouquet of 30 tulips from ProFlowers on May 17, 2012, I followed Amazon's instructions and clipped a small amount from each stem (diagonally under running water is a good idea) and let them soak up cold water for eight hours in the plastic collar designed to keep them bunched tightly. Then I retrimmed them and put them in a vase with floral preserver. Had I wanted to keep them standing straight up I would have kept the bottom string tied and used a smaller vase (see below).<br /><br />There are also plenty of vids and information sites on the web about these slightly tricky but very rewarding blooms. Click on the ProFlowers homepage under \"Flower Care\" for verbal instructions. This time, through LOTS of online shopping I was able to get the 30 tulips plus the pictured trumpetlike \"amethyst\" vase* (which really is purple, despite the photographic process showing blue) and a small box of chocolates (only eight pieces, but they were delicious) at just under forty dollars plus S&H direct from ProFlowers. (*You will probably just get a clear glass vase.)<br /><br />I am basically satisfied but cannot give this bouquet five full stars because:<br /><br />. In this particular case the tulips consisted of eight red-and-yellow tulips (which I later learned are called \"Flair\"), with most of the rest white or pale pink. This is fine, but the Flairs were running about a day or two ahead of the rest, bloom-wise. There should have been better synchronization (tulips are not as long-lived as, say, ProFlowers' own roses or Peruvian Lilies). I have appended a photo of how they looked on the second day.<br /><br />. Despite my every Internet order saying \"Carrier: Please Ring Bell!\" FedEx left these at the door at 9:35 a.m. without ringing. We were home. How hard is it to press a button? IMO this is the source of a lot of one-star ratings of ProFlowers deliveries -- the product being left for too long in extreme heat or cold -- and ProFlowers should really address this issue.<br /><br />If you want an economical bouquet that needs lots of water initially but opens up slowly and lasts a long time (I have a two-week-old bouquet on my bookcase as I write this and it it just now time to 'pull the plug'), try ProFlowers' Peruvian Lilies." ]

[ "List of This Is Us characters Kate lives in Los Angeles and is initially her brother, Kevin's, personal assistant.[32] When Kevin decides to move to New York, he fires her in order to allow her to build her own life, apart from him.[26] She is an ardent Pittsburgh Steelers fan and has a routine where she watches the games with her dad's ashes.[17] At nine years old, she has her appendix removed on Christmas Eve.[27]" ]

[ "This Is Us (TV series) Most episodes feature a storyline taking place in the present (2016–2018, contemporaneous with airing) and a storyline taking place at a set time in the past; but some episodes are set in one time period or use multiple flashback time periods. Flashbacks often focus on Jack and Rebecca c.1980 both before and after their babies' birth, or on the family when the Big Three are children (at least ages 8–10) or adolescents; these scenes usually take place in Pittsburgh, where the Big Three are born and raised. Various other time periods and locations have also served as settings. Recently, the show has flashed back to follow the lives of newer characters, such as Randall's foster child, Deja. As adults, Kate lives in Los Angeles, Randall and his family are in New Jersey, and Kevin relocates from Los Angeles to New York City.", "This Is Us (TV series) The series follows the lives of siblings Kevin, Kate, and Randall (known as the \"Big Three\"), and their parents Jack and Rebecca Pearson. It takes place in the present and using flashbacks, at various times in the past. Kevin and Kate are the two surviving members of a triplet pregnancy, born six weeks premature on Jack's 36th birthday in 1980; their brother is stillborn. Believing they were meant to have three children, Jack and Rebecca, who are white, decide to adopt Randall, a black child born the same day and brought to the same hospital after his biological father abandoned him at a fire station. Jack dies when his children are 17.", "List of This Is Us characters Toby Damon, portrayed by Chris Sullivan is Kate's fiancé[6] Toby was born in Palm Springs, California.[6] Toby began dating Kate after they met at a weight-loss support group.[4] Toby is confident with his own body although obese, and encourages Kate to have better self-esteem. He was previously married to a woman whom Kate views as beautiful and successful, but who treated him badly. Toby gained 90 pounds in the first year after his divorce.[26]", "List of This Is Us characters Rebecca Pearson née Malone (born 1950 or 1951), portrayed by Mandy Moore, is Jack's wife, and the mother of Kate, Kevin, and Randall.[2]", "Kate Austen In the Sideways, Kate remembers her life when she helps deliver Aaron at the concert. Kate waits at the concert so she can reunite with Jack. She finds him and tells him \"I've missed you so much\", a reference that she probably lived a long life after leaving the Island and missed Jack profoundly. Jack eventually awakens and remembers Kate and his friends. Together with Jack at her side, they move on together.", "The Lake House (film) The film is set and filmed in the Chicago area. The lake house itself was built on what is called Maple Lake,[2] located within the Maple Lake Forest Preserve off of 95th Street in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. After filming the house was removed and a simple fishing dock was put in its place. The downtown scenes are in The Loop. The scenes where Kate and Morgan go to Henry's office, and Kate's dramatic exit down the stairs, were filmed at the Chicago Architecture Foundation. The scene where Henry and Alex talk on the street after being in their father's office was filmed on the 400 block of South Michigan Ave, in front of the Fine Arts Building and the Auditorium Theater. Other filming locations include Aurora, Illinois (now the Madison Park community) and Riverside, Illinois, a small town on the outskirts of Chicago that is known for its historic houses, and several Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. The railway station in the movie is the real station of Riverside, and the bridge that Alex crosses while chasing Jack is called the \"Swinging Bridge\"; it crosses the Des Plaines River. The scene where Kate gets stood-up is in Millennium Park at the Park Grill.", "List of This Is Us characters Randall Kenneth Pearson (born August 31, 1980), portrayed by Sterling K. Brown (current day), Niles Fitch (ages 15—17), and Lonnie Chavis (ages 8—10), is Jack and Rebecca's (adopted) son, and Kate and Kevin's brother.[4] He is \"Number Three\" of the \"Big Three\", being adopted after Kevin and Kate were born.[4] On his 36th birthday, he found his biological father, William, and invited him to his northern New Jersey home.[4]", "List of This Is Us characters Kate Emily Pearson (born August 31, 1980), portrayed by Chrissy Metz (current day), Hannah Zeile (age 15—17), and Mackenzie Hancsicsak (ages 8—10), is Jack and Rebecca's daughter, and Kevin and Randall's sister.[4] She is \"Number Two\" of the \"Big Three\", being the second and last of the surviving triplets to be born.[4]", "The Handmaid's Tale (film) Kate, is now free once again and wearing non-uniform clothes, but facing an uncertain future. She is living by herself, pregnant in a trailer while receiving intelligence reports from the rebels. She wonders if she will be reunited with Nick, but expresses hope that will happen, and resolves with the rebels' help she will find her daughter.", "List of This Is Us characters Jack Pearson (born August 31, 1944; death between 1996 - 1997) portrayed by Milo Ventimiglia as Rebecca's husband, and Kate, Kevin, & Randall's father.[2] Jack has a brother named Nick.", "Chrissy Metz Christine Michelle Metz (born September 29, 1980)[1] is an American actress and singer. She is known for playing Kate Pearson in the NBC drama This Is Us, for which she has earned Best Supporting Actress nominations at the Primetime Emmy Awards (2017) and Golden Globe Awards (2017 and 2018).", "My Sister's Keeper (film) During the hearing, Jesse reveals that Anna is actually acting under Kate's instruction; Kate, not wanting to live any longer, had persuaded Anna to refuse to donate her kidney. Anna had wanted to give Kate her kidney and had been upset at Kate's decision. Sara is finally forced to acknowledge what Kate has been trying to tell her all this time: she is ready to die. Later that day, Kate dies sleeping, with her mother by her side. After her death, Campbell states that Anna has won the case. The family moves on with their lives. Sara, who gave up practicing law to look after Kate, returns to work, Brian retires from firefighting and counsels troubled youths, and Jesse receives an arts scholarship in New York. Anna reveals that every year on Kate's birthday they go to Montana, which was her \"most favorite place in the world\". She concludes that she was not born merely to save her sister, she was born because she had a sister, and that their relationship continues even in death.", "Fifty Shades of Grey Anastasia \"Ana\" Steele is a 21-year-old college senior attending Washington State University in Vancouver, Washington. Her best friend is Katherine \"Kate\" Kavanagh, who writes for the college newspaper. Due to an illness, Kate is unable to interview 27-year-old Christian Grey, a successful and wealthy Seattle entrepreneur, and asks Ana to take her place. Ana finds Christian attractive as well as intimidating. As a result, she stumbles through the interview and leaves Christian's office believing it went poorly. Ana does not expect to meet Christian again, but he appears at the hardware store where she works. While he purchases various items including cable ties, masking tape, and rope, Ana informs Christian that Kate would like some photographs to illustrate her article about him. Christian gives Ana his phone number. Later, Kate urges Ana to call Christian and arrange a photo shoot with their photographer friend, José Rodriguez.", "Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins The live-action cast features Robbie Amell as Fred, Kate Melton as Daphne, Hayley Kiyoko as Velma and Nick Palatas as Shaggy. Scooby-Doo was created using computer-generated imagery and his voice is provided by Frank Welker, who also was a cast member of the animated series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! and The Scooby-Doo Show, providing the voice of Fred.", "Lucas Horton Sami and Lucas become engaged, but Kate does everything in her power to make sure they never walk down the aisle. She brings Sami's ex, Brandon Walker, back to town. Kate has Sami and Brandon drugged and put into bed with each other, where Lucas finds them together on the morning of the wedding, and he is devastated. As much as he loves Sami, he can't forgive her for this. He ripp up the marriage license and swears he never wants anything else to do with her. Sami tries to convince him that Kate is responsible, but his mother smooth-talks him and he only further blames his ex-fiancé.", "List of This Is Us characters Sophie, portrayed by Alexandra Breckenridge (modern day), Amanda Leighton (ages 15-17), and Sophia Coto (age 10), was Kate's childhood best friend and Kevin's childhood love and his ex-wife. Kevin moved to New York and reconciled with her, after his relationships with Olivia and Sloane ended.[18][28] Their relationship initially survived the distance when Kevin was in his movie in L.A., but Kevin broke up with Sophie, admitting that he couldn't be the man that he wanted to be for her.[30] When Kevin got sober, he tried making amends to Sophie; she just wanted to remember Kevin when they were younger.[3]", "The Lake House (film) In 2006, Dr. Kate Forrester (Sandra Bullock) is leaving a lake house that she has been renting in Madison, Wisconsin to move to Chicago. Kate leaves a note in the mailbox for the next tenant to forward her mail, adding that the paint-embedded pawprints on the path leading to the house were already there when she arrived.", "Will Horton Will Horton is a fictional character from the American soap opera Days of Our Lives, known for award-winning storylines including a highly-praised coming out story,[3][4][5] award-winning performances by actor Chandler Massey,[6][5][7] and as one half of US daytime drama's first male gay wedding and marriage.[8] The character first appeared on November 16, 1995, as a newborn child who is initially called Will Reed. His mother Sami Brady (Alison Sweeney) acts as if Austin Reed (Austin Peck) is the father so Austin might marry her, and when Sami later realizes that Will must actually be the son of Lucas Roberts (Bryan Dattilo), she tries to prevent others finding out.[9] Two years later the truth comes out, and Will, who is renamed Will Roberts,[10] has a \"tumultuous upbringing\" due to his parents' ever-changing love lives, and their machinations as they fight each other for custody. As a child, Will does everything he can to bring his parents together, so they can be a \"real family\"; whereas his grandma Kate Roberts (Lauren Koslow) schemes to keep his parents apart.[9] In 2007, Lucas, now in love with Sami and angry at Kate's interference, changes his and Will's surname to Horton (after Lucas's father).[10][11][12]", "List of This Is Us characters Beth Pearson, portrayed by Susan Kelechi Watson, is Randall's wife, whom he met in college and later married, circa 1999. The couple has two daughters, Annie and Tess.[14] Their marriage is based on honesty where they make an effort not to have secrets from one another. William revealed to Beth that he had met and communicated with Rebecca. This caused Beth to give Rebecca an ultimatum: to either tell Randall or she would. Growing up, Beth lived in a three-bedroom house with 14 other people.[22] After Randall quit his job, Beth took a job so Randall could be a stay-at-home dad.[19] But after a while, Beth thought Randall was in \"outer space\", and Beth thought working again would be good for Randall.[12]", "Kate Walsh (actress) Kathleen Erin Walsh (born October 13, 1967)[1] is an American actress and businesswoman. Her roles include Dr. Addison Montgomery on the ABC television dramas Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice, Rebecca Wright on the short-lived NBC sitcom Bad Judge, and Olivia Baker on the Netflix drama series 13 Reasons Why.", "This Is Us (TV series) Episodes weave through the stories of the past and present of the characters, with most scenes taking place in 1980, 1989–1995, and the present day (2016–2017). Flashback scenes take place in Pittsburgh, while current scenes are typically split between Los Angeles, New Jersey, and New York City.", "Cheaper by the Dozen (2003 film) Tom's a coach at a college in Indiana, where he had 12 kids. Kate wrote a book to send to her friend to publish it. Tom receives an offer from his friend to coach at his alma mater in Evanston, IL. Tom accepts the offer, and he and Kate make plans to move to Evanston. So the entire Baker family move there. The setting at the Bakers' new home is tense. The situation at school is bad. When her book is ready for publication, Kate soon goes on a book tour to promote it. Tom hires Nora & Hank to manage the little kids. When Nora & Hank arrive, the little kids plan to prank Hank, which they do. The prank makes Nora & Hank refuse to babysit. Tom berates the young kids for their prank. Kate leaves for her book tour & Tom realizes he can't handle the kids on his own. He brings the football players from work to the family's house for practicing in the living room to prepare for the big game as the children perform chores & their playtime. But the kids cause trouble at school. Kate hears from the kids about the chaos and comes home to deal with it. Diane decides to create another promotion by inviting Oprah to tape a segment about the Bakers in their home. Despite coaching from Kate, the Bakers don't show the family Kate described in her book. With Mark all agitated due to his frog's death, an altercation occurs before the segment starts, causing it's cancellation. Mark flees from home. Tom finds Mark on a train. The Baker family reunites, address their issues with each other, & Tom quits his job.", "Home Alone The McCallister family is preparing to spend Christmas in Paris, gathering at Peter and Kate's home outside of Chicago on the night before their departure. Peter and Kate's youngest son, eight-year-old Kevin, is being ridiculed by his siblings and cousins. A fight with his older brother, Buzz, results in Kevin getting sent to the third floor of the house for punishment, where he wishes that his family would disappear. During the night, heavy winds cause damage to power lines, which causes a temporary power outage and resets the alarm clocks, causing the entire family to oversleep. In the confusion and rush to get to the airport, Kevin is accidentally left behind.", "Pilot (Lost) That night, as Jack and Kate decide to search for the plane cockpit as its transceiver would allow the survivors to send a distress signal, loud roaring noises and crashing trees are heard in the nearby jungle. The following morning, the two are accompanied by Charlie Pace (Dominic Monaghan) on their way into the jungle. The cockpit is found leaning against a tree, forcing the trio to climb it to reach the cabin. Charlie disappears into the bathroom while Jack and Kate awaken the concussed pilot (Greg Grunberg) in the cabin. The pilot tells them that the plane had lost radio contact six hours after take off, where it turned back for Fiji and hit wake turbulence. After estimating that the flight was 1,000 miles off course before it crashed, the pilot tries using the transceiver, but cannot get a signal. Suddenly the strange roaring noises heard on the beach the previous night return, and when the pilot investigates, he is seized by something outside and blood splatters on the window, prompting the trio to grab the transceiver and flee. During the escape, Charlie falls and Jack returns to help him, while a terrified Kate runs on. After the monster disappears, Kate, Charlie and Jack reunite and find the pilot's bloodied corpse suspended in a treetop.", "John Doe In other English-speaking countries, unique placeholder names, numbers and/or codenames have become more often used in the context of police investigations. This has included the United Kingdom, where usage of \"John Doe\" originated during the Middle Ages. However, the legal term John Doe injunction (or John Doe Order),[3] has survived in English law and other legal systems influenced by it. Other names used informally such as \"Joe Bloggs\" or \"John Smith\" have sometimes been informally used as placeholders for an everyman in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, such names are seldom used in legal or police circles in the same sense as John Doe.", "Public good In economics, a public good is a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous in that individuals cannot be effectively excluded from use and where use by one individual does not reduce availability to others.[1]", "The Storm (short story) \"The Storm\" is a short story written by the American writer Kate Chopin in 1898. The story takes place during the 19th century somewhere in the South, where storms are frequent and dangerous. It did not appear in print in Chopin's lifetime, but it was published in The Complete Works of Kate Chopin in 1969.[1] This story is the sequel to Chopin's \"At the 'Cadian Ball\".[2]", "This Is Us (TV series) Kevin and Kate are the two surviving members of a triplet pregnancy, conceived after Super Bowl XIV at \"Froggy's\" in Pittsburgh.[5] Their due date is October 12, 1980, but they are born six weeks early on August 31 (Jack's birthday); their biological brother is stillborn.[6] After losing their third baby, Jack and Rebecca decide to adopt Randall, a black child born the same day and brought to the same hospital after his biological father abandons him at a fire station.[4]", "List of This Is Us characters Tess Pearson, portrayed by Eris Baker, is Randall and Beth's older daughter. She was promoted to series regular in season two.[38] She is named after the Tessana ceiling fan Randall was going to purchase when hearing about Beth going into labor.[23] Although not noticed acting out previously, she hides in her uncle Kevin's car (claiming she hates it at her house), when he is pulled over for speeding and charged with DUI;[9] she later claims she was just unhappy that Deja, the foster child, had to go home.[2] Tess admits one day (on the 20th anniversary of Jack's death) she has tried to prevent social workers from calling, worried that recent changes mean Randall wanted a \"new life\"; Randall reassures her that he will always be devoted to her.[3] Tess is shown in the future as an adult (portrayed by Iantha Richardson[39]), working as a social worker, with an older Randall meeting her for dinner like they have done while Tess was younger.[3]", "This Is Us (TV series) This Is Us is an American television series created by Dan Fogelman that premiered on NBC on September 20, 2016.[1] The series stars an ensemble cast featuring Milo Ventimiglia, Mandy Moore, Sterling K. Brown, Chrissy Metz, Justin Hartley, Susan Kelechi Watson, Chris Sullivan, Ron Cephas Jones, Jon Huertas, Alexandra Breckenridge, Niles Fitch, Logan Shroyer, Hannah Zeile, Mackenzie Hancsicsak, Parker Bates, Eris Baker, and Faithe Herman. It is about the family lives and connections of several people who all share the same birthday and the ways in which they are similar and different.[1]", "Carrie Bradshaw Carrie is a resident of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. She lives in a brownstone on the Upper East Side at the fictional house number of 245, on East 73rd Street, between Park and Madison. She lives in this apartment throughout the series, having bought it from Aidan in the fourth season, after Aidan had bought it and the apartment next-door for himself and Carrie during their engagement. In the initial episodes of the first season, Carrie's apartment is seen to be above a coffee shop somewhere near the vicinity of Madison Avenue. By approximately the fourth episode, the usual facade of a series of brownstones adjacent to hers is adopted, and remains that way throughout the series. The first episode also features a different apartment from the one used for the next 93 episodes and the movies. In the real life, the building with the famous stairs is 66 Perry Street, N.Y.C (West Village, Manhattan).", "The Door in the Wall (novel) The story, illustrated by the author, is set in England during the Middle Ages, as the Black Death (bubonic plague) is sweeping across the country. Young Robin is sent away to become a knight like his father, but his dreams are endangered when he loses the use of his legs. A doctor reassures Robin that the weakness in his legs is not caused by the plague and the doctor is supposed to come and help him but does not. His parents are away, serving the king and queen during war, and the servants abandon the house, fearing the plague. Robin is saved by Brother Luke, a friar, who finds him and takes him to St. Mark's, the monastery where he lives and cares for him." ]

[ "Coconut crab - Wikipedia The coconut crab (Birgus latro) is a species of terrestrial hermit crab, also known as the robber crab or palm thief. ... Adult coconut crabs feed on fruits, nuts, seeds, and the pith of fallen trees, ... Peeling the thick, fibrous husk and cracking the hard shell may eventually and collectively open a coconut whereas climbing is an...", "Coconut crab on palm trunk - ARKive Learn more about the Coconut crab - with amazing Coconut crab videos, photos and ... amongst crabs and explains why this species is called the coconut crab. ... this crab feeds on coconuts, and is actually able to climb coconut palms, where it ... These crabs are slow growing,, and there is good evidence that they live to be...", "robber crab - definition of robber crab in English | Oxford Dictionaries A large terrestrial crablike crustacean which climbs coconut palms to feed on the nuts, found on islands in the Indo-Pacific area. Also called coconut crab.", "Coconut Crab - Birgus latro (Linnaeus, C.,1767) - Overview ... Coconut Crab learn more about names for this taxon ... As its name suggests this crab feeds on coconuts, and is actually able to climb coconut palms, where it is ... These crabs are slow growing, (8), and there is good evidence that they live to...", "Robber crab - definition and synonims of robber crab in english ... ... the Indo-Pacific region, known for its habit of climbing coconut palms to feed on the nuts. ... These words in the dictionary share the same root as robber crab." ]

[ "Fiddler Crabs Fiddler crabs are intertidal animals that live in mangrove forests, tidal creeks, sandbars, ... The space around the burrow is used for feeding and courting. ... Because males have only one small, feeding claw, they feed at half the rate of the females. ... We study the mating, fighting, signalling and ecology of the fiddlers in their...", "Fiddler crab - Wikipedia A fiddler crab, sometimes known as a calling crab, may be any of approximately 100 species of ... If the large fiddle claw is lost, males will develop one on the opposite side after their ... The movement of the smaller claw from ground to mouth during feeding explains the crabs' ... This is an example of dishonest signalling.", "Fiddler Crabs This crab and his claw is one of West Meadow's great wonders, for literally ... Males wave their large claws in order to attract females to the burrow. ... Females have two small claws, both of which are used for feeding on the sand and scraping organic matter. ... A female sand fiddler crab - note the two small feeding claws.", "Calamus rotang - Memidex dictionary/thesaurus \"Calamus rotang\" definition: a climbing palm of Sri Lanka and southern India ... palms used for Malacca cane in the making of furniture, baskets, ... or \"Plectomia\" of tropical Asia, having long, tough, slender stems. ... a tropical climbing plant with thin, tough stems | these stems used as a material for making wicker furniture,...", "Crab - Wikipedia Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, which typically have a very short ... Many other animals with similar names such as hermit crabs, king crabs, ... such as fiddler crab males waving their large claws to attract females. ... and it must take place in a habitat that is suitable for the juvenile to survive.", "1000+ ideas about Coconut Crab on Pinterest | Hermit Crabs ... The Giant Coconut Crab (Birgus latro) is the largest terrestrial arthropod in the .... The coconut crab, a type of hermit crab that can grow to gigantic proportions, ... big and powerful front pincers (claws) which they use to tuck into their food. ..... Crabs so big, they open coconuts with their pinchers and hunt rats ...... crustacean.", "Bug Book | Western Exterminator They have a 3-segmented beak, 4-segmented antennae, and small .... Has a short, distinctly crab-like body with well-developed claws and pale ..... (egg case) for a day or two after its formation and then glue it to a surface. ... They like their personal space. ... They also need sticks because they sometimes like to climb.", "rattan palm - Memidex dictionary/thesaurus \"rattan palm\" definition: a climbing palm of Sri Lanka and southern India ... species of palms in the tribe Calameae, native to tropical regions of Africa, Asia and Australasia. ... the thin jointed stems of a palm, used to make furniture | a length of rattan ... tough stems | these stems used as a material for making wicker furniture,...", "Coconut crab videos, photos and facts - Birgus latro | ARKive The coconut crab (Birgus latro) is a type of land hermit crab with a ... This huge crustacean is well adapted to life on land with long strong legs. ... If the coconut does not break open on its fall, the crab husks the coconuts by pulling back the .... and processing food) and two pairs of maxillae (appendages used in eating, which...", "The Giant Spider Crab Is Everything You Should Fear About The ... Oct 25, 2014 ... 10 Reasons Why The Giant Spider Crab Is The Crustacean Of Your Nightmares. ... we humans know that the oceans are deep, dark, and full of terrifying creatures. ... were known for the serious injures they can cause with their strong claws. ... At the bottom of the ocean, Giant Spider Crabs pretty much eat...", "Coconut crabs have a wide-ranging habitat and can be found on ... Sadly for coconut crabs, their shells are prized as souvenirs, just as their ... time for this coconut crab to leave the tree hollow and go look for some food. ... Once in their underground lairs, coconut crabs seal the entrance, using their large pincers .... they can drop the coconuts they're carrying to be broken open on the ground...", "Fiddler Crabs of the Northern Gulf Coast, Richard Heard, Gulf Coast ... Fiddler crabs typically live in colonies; if you find one, you're likely to find dozens nearby. ... Each species has a distinct waving motion. The motion of the feeding claws on both males and females also resembles a ... Ghost crabs prefer open sandy beaches rather than tidal marshes, and they're much larger than fiddlers.", "Control begins with a flight progress strip that contains all of a ... (Sarah of the Clue Crew Reports from Catalina Island.) The tiny pinchers that keep ... reports from Catalina Island.) When an octopus feeds on crab, it punctures the shell with one of these avian tools, injecting a poison and liquifying the meat.", "Atlantic Ghost Crab - Chesapeake Bay Program Also known as the sand crab, the Atlantic ghost crab is a sand-colored crustacean ... Ghost crabs are active on coastal beaches in the Chesapeake Bay region ... Common on coastal beaches; they dig burrows in the sand, where they seek ... They will also scavenge for vegetation and detritus. ... Types Of Critters; Habitats.", "Fiddler crab - Wikipedia A fiddler crab, sometimes known as a calling crab, may be any of approximately 100 species of ... Like all crabs, fiddler crabs shed their shells as they grow. If they have lost legs or claws during their present growth cycle, a new one will be ... If the large fiddle claw is lost, males will develop one on the opposite side after their...", "Tropical Palms - Asian region Thirteen species of native South Asian palms were found to be both under threat in the wild ... All these existing patterns of utilization are for subsistence purposes alone. ... leaves used as umbrellas: edible starch from stem; seeds to make beads; formerly, ..... Large canes are used whole to make the frames of cane furniture.", "Claws: The Ultra-Jumbo Class of Crustaceans | Shit You Didn't ... Aug 17, 2015 ... When the Terror-crab asks for a light, you better damn well give that bastard your lighter. ... Tasmanian giant crabs, despite their girth, don't really eat that much or that ... its goals and interests, settling down, losing track of what music is ... However, this species is still at risk of extinction from habitat loss.", "121 - Reading Comprehension - Lower and upper secondary schools In the past, the giant octopus was associated with tales of horror. Stories were ... The octopus feeds on a variety of sea creatures, such as crabs. It gently drops...", "OTTERS - Diet Eating Habits - Sea World Cape clawless and Asian small-clawed otters feed mainly on crabs and other ... marine invertebrates including crabs, sea urchins, abalones, clams, mussels, and snails. ... Of these, scientists have determined that the Asian small-clawed otter eats ... In Monterey Bay, California, researchers found that each sea otter tends to...", "Biogeography of Mitten Crab - San Francisco State University Mar 11, 2004 ... It was named the Chinese mitten crab due to its dense patch of thin black hairs ... their diet consists of worms, clams, shrimp and other smaller crustacean. ... All of the above shows that the Eriocheir sinensis crab is extremely .... derives its name from the Latin word crustaceus meaning having a shell or...", "Rattan - Wikipedia Rattan (from the Malay rotan) is the name for roughly 600 species of old world climbing palms ..... The rest of the world's supply comes from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, ... Rattans are extensively used for making furniture and baskets. ... Along with birch and bamboo, rattan is a common material used for the handles...", "Robbers Roost History - Climb Utah Robbers Roost was a popular outlaw hideout for over 30 years. ... The Roost was largely abandoned as an outlaw hangout after 1902 when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid departed for ... By 1896 his gang dubbed themselves the \"Wild Bunch. ... Their next target was the Overland Flyer train near Wilcox, Wyoming.", "Category: - CR2 Mar 29, 2013 ... Cephalopod(s) of the Week #8: Blue-Ringed Octopus and Giant Pacific Octopus ... chemical receptor-studded suckers allow it to take on some of the ... arms to capture its prey and its sharp beak and spiny radula to rip and tear flesh. ..... The nautilus uses these tentacles to bring its food towards its beak,...", "Common Spider Crab - Chesapeake Bay Program Also known as the portly spider crab or the nine-spined spider crab, the common spider crab is a long-legged and slow-moving crustacean that covers itself in...", "Fiddler Crabs You can often see their distinct burrows, which are as much as 2-3 cm in ... Males wave their large claws in order to attract females to the burrow. ... The poor males only have one feeding claw, because they have sacrificed the other ... A study by Ann Pratt demonstrated that males with proportionally larger major claws got...", "r brycki's, one of Baltimore's 3 older and better-known crab - Obryckis houses. could be called crab heaven. ... Obrycki family in l976. The building, a ... If you have not visited a crab house be- fore, it Will be ... starters. savory crab soup. a tomato and ... cious, and crab-meat cocktail, accompa- nied by a ... fried deviled crab cakes are more assertive- ... sert after this crab feast, but if there's room.", "Japanese spider crab - Wikipedia The Japanese spider crab Macrocheira kaempferi, is a species of marine crab that lives in the waters around Japan. It has the largest leg span of any arthropod. ... It also sometimes acts as a scavenger consuming dead animals. .... on survival and growth of larvae of the giant spider crab Macrocheira kaempferi (Crustacea,...", "Giant Japanese Spider Crab | Tennessee Aquarium The giant spider crab is the largest known species of crab and may live up to 100 years. The Japanese name for this species is taka-ashi-gani literally translating...", "Robbers Roost History - Climb Utah The future Wild Bunch used Robbers Roost after a Colorado bank robbery in 1889. ... alias the Tall Texan; Harvey Logan, alias Kid Curry; and Robert LeRoy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy. ... Parker soon left home to ride the outlaw trail. ... Some claim he and Sundance were killed when trapped by Bolivian soldiers, others...", "the nervous pathways for poisoning, eating and learning in octopus 1. Diagram to show three possible pathways for taste fibres (1) from the lip, (2) from receptors in the ... is to open the crab properly and remove the meat from the skeleton. ... showed any obvious aberrations of behaviour or feeding thereafter. ... with crabs, which these octopuses were not allowed to eat (triangles). For the...", "21-30 - OEDILF - Word Lookup So we fight it the way we fight weeds. ... of the genus Digitaria, also called finger-grass or fonio, are considered lawn pests. ... Infestation with the crab louse (Phthirus pubis) is known as having the crabs. ... The crabgrass that grows in my lawn ... The word crabstick is also used to describe a grouchy person, like Kate.", "Lantana camara red sage, yellow sage | A Neotropical Savanna Oct 21, 2006 ... It is Lantana camara, a plant known to and named by Linneaus himself. ... the odor as pungent, but I've seen many, many descriptions of the aroma. ... Which brings me back to the red and yellow colors. ... suggest that the flower has evolved to feed both its robber and its pollinators. ... It's hard to remember." ]

[ "Her Cyclopedia: The Goddess Juventas As Hebe, Downy-One, (below), is the maiden form of Hera, so Juventas is ... Alternate meanings: Youth, She-Who-Removes-from-Sight, Virgin-Mother-Earth. ... The Maiden aspect of Hera, Our-Lady, in the Stymphalus Triad is called Parthenos.", "PARTHENOS - Greek Demi-Goddess of Bubastus In Greek mythology Parthenos was a princess of the island of Naxos who leapt ... Source: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. ... And the other sisters of the maiden who had been seduced, namely, Molpadia and Parthenos, ... The one named Parthenos, as the god brought it to pass, enjoyed honours...", "Virgo (astrology) - Wikipedia Virgo is the sixth astrological sign in the Zodiac. Virgo is the second-largest constellation. ... The symbol of the maiden is based on Astraea. ... the constellation to Demeter, mother of Persephone, or Proserpina in Roman, the goddess of the harvest. However, some tell tales of the Greek story of Parthenos, which means virgin...", "The Colossal Athena Parthenos Statues of Pheidias - Mlahanas But when she was about to bring forth the goddess bright-eyed Athene, Zeus ... first the maiden bright-eyed Tritogeneia, equal to her father in strength and in ... This version is the so-called Athena Varvakeion (around 1 m large) from a the ... The colossal statue of the Athena Parthenos by Pheidias was completed in 438 BC.", "Virgo - Constellations of Words Astraea has been identified with the Greek goddess Dike, and Roman Justitia. ... is parthenos, and Virgo had the title Parthenos Dios, the Virgin Goddess; parthenic, ... A 'heroic maiden' (virago) is so called because she 'acts like a man' (vir + ..... Is it not this ancient story of the Maiden of the Wheat-field that is still seen in the..." ]

[ "ARTEMIS RETINUE - Greek Mythology She also had a pair of famous male hunting companions--the giant Orion and ... PARTHENOS & HEMITHEA Two princesses of the island of Naxos (Greek ... ATHENA The goddess Athena was raised alongside Artemis, Persephone, and the maiden ... BEROE The goddess-nymph of the Phoinikian city of Beruit (West Asia)...", "Virgin Goddesses | Riordan Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia The Virgin Goddesses (or maiden goddesses) are Artemis, Athena, and Hestia. ... Her only male follower and romance was Orion, the great hunter, but Artemis accidentally killed him in a plan set up by Apollo. ... Hestia is known as the Olympian goddess of the hearth after Dionysus, the god of ... Virgin Goddesses (Greek).", "ARTEMIS RETINUE - Greek Mythology Artemis was the Olympian goddess of hunting, wild animals, children and birth. ... large retinue of the goddess--her attendant bands of nymphs and mortal maidens. The most famous of were the Hyperborean maidens--Upis, Hecaerge and ... These were the first who wore the gallant bow and arrow-holding quivers on their...", "the life of greece crete 01 The defeated gods were not w2ped out; they remained, so to speak, as subject .... maiden goddess of the chase so absorbed in the ways of animals and the ... so Artemis was the model of Greek girlhood-strong athletic, graceful, chaste; and .... It was characteristic of Greece that in addition to deities of chastity, virginity, and...", "Parthenon, Athens - A View On Cities The Parthenon was built in honor of the goddess Athena Parthenos (virgin Athena), patroness of the city of Athens. Initially the temple was known as the Great Temple (Megas Naos), but later became known by the name of Parthenon.", "Old Questions and Answers about Athena | The Role of Women in ... council and the protectress of cities she was considered instrumental in the ... Question: How did the Goddess Athena affect Greek art and architecture? ..... Zeus's head, the Libyan Triple Goddess Neith, whom the Greeks called ... aristocratic women, might also serve as kanephoroi, bearers of the .... Athena Parthenos", "Athena - Ancient Greek Goddess - Ancient Greece For where she was known as Athenai in Athens, she was called Mykene in Mycaene ... an entirely new deity, rather renaming an existing goddess to be the patron of their city. ... Athena is said to have punished the maiden Arachne for her hubris in daring to ... It also served as the perfect symbol of the synergy of matriarchal...", "Persephone, Queen of the Underworld - Greeka.com According to Greek Mythology, Persephone, the queen of the underworld, was the ... She was also called Kore, which means \"maiden\" and grew up to be a lovely girl ... However, Demeter had an obsessed love for her only daughter and kept all ... her feet suddenly cleaved open and through the gap Hades himself came out...", "Chapter 14 Comparative Myth Bibliography ... Persephone, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, was also called KORE [ko'ree] (girl or maiden). ... Her brother Hades would make a fine husband for her daughter, since he was a great god, ... Her name is DOSO [doh'soh], and she was carried off from Crete by pirates, from whom she...", "The Wiccan Triple Goddess | Sacred Wicca Brigid - (Celtic) In her maiden aspect this Goddess is honored at the festival of ... Flora - (Roman) The Goddess of flowering plants, especially those that bore fruit. .... the Triple Goddess may be the least understood and feared of the three aspects. ... Badb: (Irish) A shape shifting warrior Goddess who symbolizes the cycles of...", "Artemis/Diana, Goddess of the Moon - WHEN THE GODDESS ... Artemis was the Greek Maiden Goddess of the Moon and the Hunt. ... Artemis has also been known by such other names as Delia, Phoebe, Pythia and ... Artemis was also known as Dea Anna in Espheus, which means the many ... It was also from this particular aspect that Diana gained the title the Queen of Heaven..", "PERSEPHONE - Greek Goddess of Spring, Queen of the ... PERSEPHONE was the goddess queen of the underworld, wife of the god .... \"King Zeus' own sister [Demeter] and his daughter [Persephone] are happy, both, and ... A divine dispute ensued over which god should possess him, with the result ..... Haides who ruled the Molossians at the time of the judges of the Jews, had a...", "Xochiquetzal - Wikipedia In Aztec mythology, Xochiquetzal also called Ichpochtli Classical Nahuatl: Ichpchtli [itpotti], meaning \"maiden\", was a goddess associated with concepts of fertility, beauty, and female ... The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya: An Illustrated Dictionary of Mesoamerican Religion. London: Thames...", "Athena - Wikipedia Athena or Athene often given the epithet Pallas (/pls/; ), is the goddess of wisdom, ... A large snake accompanied her and she held Nike, the goddess of victory, ... Thus for Plato her name was to be derived from Greek , .... Athena leaped from Zeus' head, fully grown and armed, with a shout\"and...", "Parthenon - Wikipedia The Parthenon is a former temple, on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the goddess ... The resulting explosion severely damaged the Parthenon and its sculptures. From 1800 to 1803 ..... It was previously presumed that the missing metopes were destroyed during the Morosini explosion of the Parthenon in 1687.", "Athena - Wikipedia Athena or Athene often given the epithet Pallas (/pls/; ), is the goddess of wisdom, ... Mycenae was the city where the Goddess was called Mykene, and Mycenae is named in .... After Erechthonius was born, Gaia gave him to Athena. .... Athena leaped from Zeus' head, fully grown and armed, with a shout\"and...", "Durga (Sanskrit: ); meaning \"the inaccessible\" or ... - Pinterest ... meaning \"the inaccessible\" or \"the invincible\" is a fierce form of the Hindu Goddess or Devi. ... Brooklyn Museum: Asian Art: Goddess Durga 8th century sandstone ..... Parvati is the highest Mother Goddess in Hindu religion from whom all Hindu ... Beautiful (Goddess) of the Three Cities\"), also called oa (\"Sixteen\"),...", "From Snake Goddess to Medusa Versions of the story talk about how Medusa was born a beautiful maiden with ... goddess Athena for rivalling her beauty and Medusa was transformed into a hideous figure ... The unity of the Great Goddess becomes divided in Greek mythology. ... her of her charms and changed her beautiful ringlets into hissing serpents.", "Durga (Sanskrit: ); meaning \"the inaccessible\" or ... - Pinterest Durga (Sanskrit: ); meaning \"the inaccessible\" or \"the invincible\" is a ... Durga is a most fierce aspect of the Hindu Goddess or Devi, she is seen .... Beautiful (Goddess) of the Three Cities\"), also called oa (\"Sixteen\"), ..... Durga Shivshakti, Indian Gods, India Hindu, Hinduism Gods, Durga India, Goddess Religion,...", "Parthenon - Wikipedia The Parthenon is a former temple, on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the goddess .... Around the cella and across the lintels of the inner columns runs a ... The roof was covered with large overlapping marble tiles known as imbrices .... The Parthenon was converted into a Christian church in the final decade of...", "TIBET: Call It Chomolungma - TIME Tibetan natives called it Chomolungma, meaning \"Goddess Mother of Mountains,\" ... to the summit) will hereafter be known by its ancient name, Chomolungma.", "Athena - Ancient Greek Goddess - Ancient Greece Considering the fact that Athena was known to be a virgin goddess and Ana was a ... During the battle between the giants and Olympians (gigantomachy), it is said that ... Athena's shield and aegis also traditionally bear the face of the gorgon ... of the Olympians, and thus Athena turned the arrogant maiden into a spider as...", "Acropolis - Ancient History Encyclopedia Sep 2, 2009 ... An `acropolis' is any citadel or complex built on a high hill. ... most famous being the Acropolis of Athens, Greece, built in the 5th century BCE. ... Wishing to create a lasting monument which would both honour the goddess Athena ... as the Temple of Athena Parthenos ('Athena the Virgin' in Greek), or in the...", "ATHENA (Athene) - Greek Goddess of Wisdom, War & Crafts ... Female and male, the arts of war are thine, O much-formed, Drakaina ... Each maiden representing a goddess was accompanied by her own escort . .... All these traditions, however, agree in making Athena a daughter of Zeus; but a second ... kinds of science, industry, and art, are ascribed to her, and all her inventions are...", "List of Greek mythological figures - Wikipedia The following is a list of gods, goddesses and many other divine and ... Virgin goddess of the hunt, wilderness, animals, young girls, childbirth, and plague. ... Queen of the gods, and goddess of marriage, women, childbirth, ... He was depicted either as a handsome and athletic...", "Circe - Wikipedia Circe was a powerful sorceressvariously described as a goddess, nymph, or witchin Greek ... Thus so she turned them all into swine with her magic wand or staff after they gorged themselves on it. ... Odysseus followed Hermes' advice, freeing his men and then remained on the island for one year, feasting and drinking...", "Parthenon - Wikipedia The Parthenon is a former temple, on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the goddess ... These sculptures, now known as the Elgin Marbles or the Parthenon Marbles, were sold in .... This building replaced a hekatompedon (meaning \"hundred-footer\") and would have stood beside the archaic temple dedicated to...", "CELTIC GODS AND GODDESSES - Angelfire Celtic (Irish) Goddess of love and fertility, later known as the fairy queen. ... the celtic order of Tuatha de Danaan, Goddess of medicinal plants and keeper of ... Mother earth Goddess and maiden aspect of the Morrigu. .... remains one of the most popular Irish saints today, along with Saint Patrick. .... Pagan feast day, Ostara.", "Caryatid - Wikipedia A caryatid is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head. The Greek term karyatides literally means \"maidens of Karyai\", an ancient town of Peloponnese. Karyai had a famous temple dedicated to the goddess Artemis in her aspect ... One of those original six figures, removed by Lord Elgin in the early 19th...", "Virgo - Constellations of Words Explore the etymology and symbolism of the constellations ... However, a virgin cannot be correctly called a heroic maiden unless she performs a man's task. ... They located the sign Virgo among the constellations because on the days when ..... image of the harvest-goddess, which, with a sickle and sheaves in her arms,...", "The Egyptians called themselves Remetch, simply meaning this, like ... Jul 8, 2016 ... The Egyptians called themselves Remetch, simply meaning this, like Inuit # Quiz # Question ... Up next. An Egyptian fertility goddess, or what the Thames is called as it runs through # Quiz # Question - Duration: 0:29.", "The Amazon Nation: Chapter Seven - The Moonspeaker Nov 25, 2012 ... Ergatis - work woman; Athena as inventor of weaving and spinning .... The idea being, that the Greeks took the meaning of the Egyptian name and chose a term ..... A satire was produced and dedicated to Athena, children's contests held. ..... Women called upon Athena or Minerva, a similar Latin Goddess,..." ]

[ "185 mph" ]

[ "at the top", "top round or top sirloin", "On Top", "What's Up?", "Carol Speed", "top", "What a Friend", "What's Happening!!", "A speed bump", "Speed skiing", "What's in It for Me", "things are what they are", "What If Nothing", "What A Night", "Claude Speed", "What If It's You", "What a Life!", "What Are Words", "What Not to Wear", "What Car?", "Doris Speed", "what is visible", "What Part of No", "What So Not", "What If We", "What a Waste", "speed juggling", "What Is a Youth", "Top Rank", "What Tingsamitr", "Girls on Top", "Hill Top" ]

[ "['Soreness, redness, and/or swelling from the shot.', 'Fainting.', 'Headache.', 'Fever.', 'Muscle aches.', 'Nausea.', 'Fatigue.']" ]

[ "The flu shot is 46% effective for this year's 2020 flu season.", "Furthermore, you may be able to get your B12 injection at your local pharmacy. Most New Brunswick pharmacists are trained to administer injections such as flu shots and travel vaccines. When used orally or by injection, people do not normally experience side effects, even when given at higher doses.", "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday that the overall effectiveness of the shot in the current flu season is 45 percent.", "All kids 6 months old and older should get the flu vaccine every year, unless there is a medical reason not to. Babies under 6 months old are too young to get the flu shot, but they'll get some protection if their parent got the flu shot while they were pregnant.", "How effective is the birth control shot? When used perfectly, the birth control shot effectiveness is more than 99%, meaning less than 1 out of every 100 people who use it will get pregnant each year.", "A Flu Shot is not a Pneumonia Shot. A flu shot protects against the flu and its complications, which may include forms of pneumonia. But it does not offer protection against the most common type of pneumonia, pneumcoccal disease. If you get a flu shot, you may think you don't need a pneumonia shot.", "Meijer Flu Shots: costs $35.99 for quadrivalent and $69.99 for high-dose flu shots.", "What Are the Side Effects of Hyaluronic Acid Shots? The shots are usually low risk, but some side effects may occur. “Typical side effects include pain, swelling, heat, redness, and/or fluid build-up around the knee,” Dr. Miller says.", "Getting a flu shot often protects you from coming down with the flu. And although the flu shot doesn't always provide total protection, it's worth getting. This year's annual flu shot will offer protection against three or four of the influenza viruses expected to be in circulation this flu season.", "The choices include the regular flu shot (standard dose of the trivalent), the high-dose flu shot (double dose of trivalent), the quadrivalent flu shot (a new four-strain version) and the egg-free shot called Flucelvax.", "Here's something else to keep in mind: it can take two weeks for the flu vaccine to take effect. So if you're exposed to the flu within that two week period, you might still get sick. Once a flu season is over, the old vaccine is not as effective, so an annual flu shot is needed for optimal protection.", "Please schedule an appointement for your depo shot. You will have a pregnancy test to make sure you are not pregnant before receiving the shot. It takes 7 days for the shot to be effective if you have missed a shot.", "The 2017-2018 flu shot offered just 25 percent effectiveness against the predominant strain of flu that season, H3N2. But this year's shot offers 47 percent protection against all circulating strains, according to researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.", "Antibiotics won't help if you have flu. When you have flu, antibiotics will not help you feel better. Antibiotics won't help you, and their side effects could cause harm.", "It takes about two weeks for the flu shot to take full effect. If you're exposed to the influenza virus shortly before or during that time period, you might catch the flu.", "It's to protect you from the severity of the infection. If you get the flu without a shot, you'll have symptoms for 5 to 14 days. If you get the flu shot and still contract the flu, the flu shot will shorten the duration of that infection so you're only ill a fraction of the time.", "Traditional flu shots and needle-free flu shots cost $30, while the intradermal flu vaccine costs $35 and Fluzone High Dose costs $60. Publix accepts cash, Medicare Part B and many other third-party insurances as payment for flu shots, the retailer said.", "Walgreens offers free flu shots with most insurance. Flu shots are available during pharmacy and clinic hours, seven days a week—no appointment necessary.", "This year's flu shot is 72% effective against the dominant strain – much better than last year's, researchers say | Globalnews.ca.", "Bleeding after the Depo-Provera shot wears off The hormone from the birth control shot stays in your body for at least three months. Side effects, such as bleeding, may continue for several weeks beyond the shot's effectiveness window. These side effects may last for several more weeks or months after stopping.", "The side effects that a cortisone shot can trigger may counterbalance or outweigh its ability to reduce pain and inflammation. According to the National Institutes of Health, the side effects from cortisone shots include: Dizziness or headaches.", "Medicare Part D covers most vaccines and immunizations. However, there are certain vaccinations that are always covered by Part B: Influenza (flu) shots, including both the seasonal flu vaccine and the H1NI (swine flu) vaccine. Pneumococcal (pneumonia) shots.", "if my birth control (depo injection) stops my period can i still get pregnant? No. Irregular bleeding is the most common side effect of the shot, especially in the first 6 to 12 months of use. For most women, periods become fewer and lighter.", "These problems generally occur 1 to 3 days after the shot is given. Severe side effects are extremely rare. Learn more about side effects of the DTaP vaccine.", "Can having the flu cause erectile dysfunction. The flu could affect your mood, and therefore your performance. As well as this, flu medication can have side effects that can lead to erectile dysfunction.", "A seasonal flu shot at CVS/pharmacy or MinuteClinic costs $31.99. Many health plans, including Medicare Part B and TRICARE, typically cover the full cost of a flu shot.", "The flu shot is a vaccine given with a needle, usually in the arm. The quadrivalent flu vaccine is designed to protect against four different flu viruses. The high dose vaccine contains 4 times the amount of antigen as a regular flu shot and is licensed specifically for people 65 years and older.", "GIANT/MARTIN'S pharmacies offer several types of flu shots for children, adults and seniors. Most insurance plans cover flu shots at $0 copays, including Medicare Part B. Flu shots are administered by immunizing GIANT and MARTIN'S pharmacists, subject to state regulations. No appointment is needed.", "The flu shot is painful. Some people are afraid of the flu shot simply because they fear needles and the pain they produce. This is a valid argument, but Dimond says the one or two seconds of pain you'll feel from a flu shot ranks pretty low on the list of painful things you'll experience in life.", "Tamiflu can cause vomiting, nausea, and even hallucinations. But experts say it's effective in reducing flu symptoms and is worth the side effects.", "Ibuprofen or estrogen to stop bleeding from the Depot-Provera shot. Most side effects of the birth control shot will fade after the first six months. However, it's important to talk with your doctor if you're experiencing side effects, like bleeding and spotting, especially if they become a problem for you.", "Botox injections are relatively safe when performed by an experienced doctor. Possible side effects and complications include: Pain, swelling or bruising at the injection site. Headache or flu-like symptoms." ]

[ "A few ideas...\\n\\n-business updates, or maybe stories featuring a satisfied customer. \\n-feature an employee. They may be involved in some community activities or have an interesting skill or hobby.\\n-an article about money management or some financial advice\\n-how to promote healthy habits in the workplace (exercise or healthy eating, perhaps).\\n-just for fun, maybe a movie review or reviews of local restaurants" ]

[ "As you can see by the Ford Motor Company website, Ford has no dealerships in Peru:\\n\\nhttp://www.ford.com/en/company/about/countrySites/default.htm", "10 a hour is not enough but if that's what you want then apply at care dealerships", "What ever it is take it back to the dealership to get it fixed.", "first you need to narrow what you want. publishing is wide industry - do you mean publishing a book, a magazine, a newsletter or self publishing? media company is also very wide - it encompasses TV, radio, even online. be clearer with what you want first", "That's a good TOPIC, but what is the QUESTION???", "What you want to do is fairly complex and would require extensive HTML / script coding experience.\\n\\nThat said, the way you make an HTML e-mail letter with images is to basically have your images, etc. stored on a Web server that allows hotlinking.\\n\\nFor example, suppose you company's Web server is located at http://www.mycompany.com/ and you store your newsletter images in a folder named newsletter.\\n\\nThen, if this was the HTML text of your newsletter, you would be able to see the images:\\n\\n<html>\\n<head>\\n<title>Newsletter</title>\\n</head>\\n<body>\\n<h4>Hello World!</h4>\\n<p>This is our new newsletter. Hope you like it.</p>\\n<img src=\"http://www.mycompany.com/newsletter/image.jpg\" />\\n<br />\\n</body>\\n</html>\\n\\nIn other words, you simply edit the body text of your newsletter to be in HTML, using absolute addressing for all links, then send that to the recipients.\\n\\nThis may help you more:\\n\\nhttp://www.sitepoint.com/article/code-html-email-newsletters", "A credit portfolio is where credit card companies along with rental agencies, car dealerships, etc. go to see if your worthy of paying your obligations on time. I recommend going to www.annualcreditreport.com and requesting a free experian credit report to see what yours is about. You want to look at this at least once a year, if not more, to make sure no one has stolen your identity.", "look on ebay or the dealership", "gap insurance for your car? if you have gap call your dealership and get the number for your gap company. The only benifits of gap insurance is that if your car truck whatever is totaled you dont have to pay they pay your car off for you.", "Try a local community bank, real estate office,auto dealership, factory, or other very visible community business.We did this for a charity event. The sponsor(s) will want to see their name plastered on everything.Ask if they have a banner or something that you can display during games.Do not display anything for free. Get a corporate logo on pdf file & make sure all newsletters, forms, correspondence, etc. you send has their logo on it. Good luck.Big box stores(Lowe's,Walmart,some grocery stores can often help out w/ small amounts, $100.00 or so, and will often donate gift cards. Have you thought about a raffle?", "Museums and coin dealerships.", "Read the contract you signed and see what it says. If there is nothing in it saying they had the right to repo the car, then call the police and report it stolen by the dealership.", "hey, im a finance manager for a dealership,yes you can buy a lot of finance companies have first time buyer programs,however you will have a higher rate and may need some mony down just stay alway from buy here pay here lots they sell high mileage cars at high prices and do not report to the credit bueau good luck", "If the services are provided in Canada by an American Company on regular basis,the American company will be deemed to be carrying on business in Canada and should register for and charge GST.\\nIf the services are provided occasionally,there should be no GST exposure.\\n\\nFor more information,please read Deloitte's tax newsletter on this subject using the link below.", "No. Some companies operate with a lot more transparency, take a used car dealership which exists pretty much on information asymmetry and an honest stock broker who will not be able to make his sale without disclosing as much as he can about the issue he is pitching...", "In the used car section of the Ford dealership", "First do your research (i.e. What companies outsource? Where? Why? Are they saving money? Having problems? What have they learned? How would they do it differently in the future? Have they hurt American workers? The poor? Middle class? What do unions think? What do the workers who used to have those jobs think?). After you do your research outline what you have learned (i.e. The Impact of Outsourcing Jobs on the American Worker: A Study of the ZZZ Company Experience.) Now you are ready to write about this very important topic. Good luck.", "Hi, an interesting topic for HRM it could be about planning and recruiting. If you want a more specific topic you could do about the internal vs external recruiting for a large company. you can do a comparison of those two forms of recruiting, saying their advantages and disadvantages and tell which of those is better in the specific company. You could analyse the existing situation of the company, and the methods and techniques they use or the should use for recruiting.\\nAlso, you could do all of the above by compairing two companies.\\nAnother topic it could be about the selection process and emphasize in the prospective employee's experience, how important is for companies the experience criterio, but in contrast how difficult is for young well educated people to have experience in order to be selected.", "the car dealership going to handle that for you", "specialty tool available from the dealership", "I am a consultant and I work with large companies to implement Sharepoint Portal Server, which has the ability to create blogs. There are many different benefits of business blogging. \\n1) Executives can write a blog that gives status updates on the company so that all employees can follow what's going on in the company. Many times, employees feel \"out of the loop\". Blogging is a good way to keep them \"in the loop\"\\n2) Technical staff can write blogs about current projects they are working on, and/or findings within their positions that are relevant to the company.\\n3) HR/Admin staff can blog to the company as a \"newsletter\" to keep the staff informed about upcoming events such as open enrollment or other company events.\\n\\nSo, there is a use for it. The culture may not be ready for it yet, and it will take a few years for it to deeply penetrate into business culture. But, it sure beats sending out e-mail blasts to a bunch of people where you can just write in a blog which goes one-to-many.", "goto your local ford dealership. i hear they like money there.", "Some dealers will sell you the car with a high percent rate. They don't care about the bad credit. If a big dealership doesn't sell you one, go to a \"mom and pop\" type used car dealership.", "I'm not sure that this is what you are after, but a \"RUN SHEET\" is an internal reference document that shows what ads are to run in a given publication (such as newspaper, magazine, newsletter, or even a website).", "If you mean a \"new\" new car dealership you will need to get a franchise from a manufacturer. You could buy an existing dealership. Either way you will need a pocket full of money and experience to have a shot.", "Be upfront about any felonies and eventually someone will give you a break. Stay out of the job area related to your felony. For example don't apply at a car dealership is you stold cars, etc. Good Luck!", "They sell them at reduced costs because at the end of the quarter and year units is what they make commission on not dollar amount, or they move those vehicles to a \"sister\" dealership so they have room for the new inventory.", "You do not have to lie. You just have to be willing to say no if they will not offer the car for what you want to pay. If the process makes you feel sleazy, then maybe CarMax or a Saturn dealership where the prices are fixed might be the right option for you.", "I highly doubt it. It's probably whatever the dealership says. They have no obligation to take it back, I think.", "This has newsletters in Greek. PDF format you need Acrobat Reader. http://www.lifescaneurope.com/gr/en/diabetes/newsletter/", "you need to be in the car section. This is the trivia section. I'd look at the owner's manual or call the dealership.", "Nissan Titan! For those of you that are going to write f150 I work at the ford dealership and those are pieces of crap." ]

[ "Don't change a thing....keep talking to her as normal....when you know shes ready to be told you love her than go for that too....but just keep chill and stay the same" ]

[ "it`s not much important,trust me.just show her that you are a special.TALK-if you know how to talk and what to tell every girl will likes you.every boy can make a girl to like him,if he knows what to tell and how to talk.", "A lot of girls like that have bad relationships with their dads so they are looking for love, whether consciously or unconsciously. If you know a girl like that, don't try to push her romantically. Really do be \"just friends\" show her you care by your actions, and be their for her.", "Talk to her about it. Tell her that it is coming between the you and her. Tell her you feel that when she flirts with other boys, it is like betraying you. Tell her how much she means to you and ask her why she does it. Does she feel like their is something lacking in the relationship? Work on it.\\n\\nSometimes, girls are just like that. There's nothing you can do if talking to her doesn't work. If she knows your feelings about her flirting with other guys, and she doesn't try and change for you, maybe you should consider splitting up with her. Find a girl that wants to give all her romantic attention to you and only you. You can't change her. Only she can do that.", "Perhaps if you found out what this girl is interested in, you could talk to her about it and recieve longer answers from her. Do you know any of her friends? They could probably help you to get to know her better.", "Chemistry? Ah yes, that's how much money you have! or maybe that's what makes you attractive and chemistry is how much are are willing to spend, ah yes that's it!\\n\\nNo, I am just picken but there is some truth to that. To be attractive all you need to do is have a little bit of confidence in your self, easier said than done. Start by holding your head up when you walk instead of staring at the ground. Look at girls that you are attracted to square in the eye, smile, and don;t look away until she does, trust me on that one. Finally, when you talk to a girl, or anyone really, speak with a resonant voice. What I mean by this is: with you sing you have to put more air through your vocal cords to carry a sustained pitch or a ringing voice. When you speak put a little more air through your vocal cords. Practice when you are alone and when you go to speak to people you will sound much more confident and everyone loves someone that seems confident no matter what you look like and that is a fact!\\n\\nGirls dont care about looks as much as guys do. Once your \"in\" (get a girl interested in you) all you need to do is talk about things that interest her. Your goal is to get to know her as hers should be to get to know you. If she feels like you are not going to judge her for her quirks and you let her know that you are interested in what she has to say and what she is interested in then she will like you.\\n\\n Do this and if it doen't work out then she wan't the girl for you and don't sweat it. Believe in your self and try to be a \"good guy\" and you will go far in love and life. Also, remember that girls don't know what they want any more than guys do so just be cool, don't push things and see what happends.", "Well i know how you feel b/c i am a shy girl, but you have to think if you cant ever talk to her than how will she ever to get to know you. I know popular people can be very intimidating but just work up the courage to talk to her. Once you do you'll feel alot better n then it'll be alot easier to approach people.", "talk to her what you can you do to make her feel good while doing love making.make sure its making love not sex . I hope you do know the differents", "Right now buddy, the best thing that you can do is to love yourself... If you don't know how to love yourself, how can others love you back... Always remember that ok? I know that you are in a very tough situation now, that's why you find it very hard to eat and to sleep, and that's normal, but you should take care of yourself because that can lead to too much depression which can be harmful for you... About getting her back, I think that you should follow the advise of some of your friends who are girls because they understand what a woman feels after a hurtful situation like that, unlike us guys who are tougher and can handle situations like that... Always remember that girls are emotional and its really hard to earn back their trust, you must first prove to her that you are sincere with your apology and show her how you still love her by waiting her make-up her mind... Give her time to think because girls always want assurance before they make a tough decision... And always be prepared and be open-minded whatever her decision will be, you should learn to accept whatever her decision is because that is your consequence, you are the one who cheated... And don't be too aggressive on her, let her think... Actually, your girl is too kind coz she still accepted you to be her bestfriend for now after wht you have done... The only key to get her back is give here some space and time to think and prove her how much you love her by waiting and accepting patiently for her final decision about your relationship... Goodluck buddy... And don't do that again because it is not only her trust that you will lose, but also the trust of your future girlfriends if ever...", "I think the first thing you should do is to introduce yourself and start a conversation with her. Try to get a feel for who she is, what she likes, her type of personality. You'll never know any of the basics unless you even talk to the girl. Once you know the basics, then that will help you make a decision to ask her out.", "Um, you can keep in touch with her like a friend, think of any of your friends , how do you keep in contact with them? Do the same thing.\\n\\nBut if yor feelings are still fresh and strong, try not to talk to her in a long time, keep busy, after a few months, you will begin to cool down. Everytime you want to talk to her, think of how she feels and remind yourself that she does not want to come back to you.\\n\\nHave you imagined how it would be like if she came back? Trust me it will be never be the same knowing that she once wanted to leave you. You will never be sure about her or her feelings again.\\n\\nSo let the healing begin. I have been there , so I know what am talking about. And what helps is that you two can still talk.\\n\\nSo do not speak to her like for a month, then may be call her after and then do the same after a month. But keep busy during this time, do the things you love the most. Hang out with your friends more.\\n\\nBut if you keep talking to her, your healing will be delayed.\\n\\nHope that helps. I know what you are going through but you will come through. Good luck.", "about the girl you like: you need to gather your courage to let her know how you feel about her. but you should also show it. action speaks louder than words so they say but sometimes things need to be said to back up those actions.\\n\\nabout the girl who likes you:let her down gently and don't be too blunt.girls are sensitive as you know and i know that you don't want to break a heart right.be respectful of her feelings even if you cannot return it.\\n\\ngoodluck!!!", "A nice dinner and a day at the spa. Women love Spa's. Take her to get a massage, a facial, the works and that is cheaper than 500. Also take her to dinner or better yet, cook for her. IF you do not know how to cook, get a simple cookbook and make something yourself. Go to foodnetwork.com and see if you could find how to make her favorite food. Clean the house for her while she is at the spa, that is free and roses, red ones (they mean hot passion). Write her a poem, that is also free or get her that spa with her best friend, her best friend will love you for it too and will score points with the wife to have a night out with just the girls. Hope that helps.", "first of all, i am NOT a girl and second of all the girls i have talked to have talked about how comfortable the chairs are on what they are sitting on. explain to her that you love to sit on chairs too and tell her your experiences that you have gone through. tell her all the drama that the chairs have made you gone through. most girls love metal chairs.", "It really depends on how much you like the girl. If you hate her and you've already dumped your girl then you'll want to go back to your girl but she won't be there anymore for you. So get to know her and then find out if you like her more than you like your current girlfriend.", "That depends on why you cannot get her. Do you not know how to find her or is she taken by someone else? If you know her name, and any other piece of distinguishing information, you could try looking her up online. If you already know how to find her (but cannot get her due to circumstance) you could always just tell her how you feel (like: \"Girl, your boyfriend sure is lucky; I should have spoken up when I had the chance\") and maybe start a friendship, because new relationships do sometimes end and you could still have a shot if you're around. If you still can't get her after all that though, maybe you should just hit a club and find a new girl to crush on; that'll usually help you forget the one you're already crushing on.", "sounds like the girl you want is the girl you broke up with . tell her how you feel and that no one else will do you want her and only her. if she loves you to she will feel the same . good luck i hopeit all works out.", "Yes girls like when guys ask them out. Even if their answer is no...still know that they are flattered that you asked them. Every girl loves to feel special...and thats how it would make her feel.", "how you know if you like a girl,its upto ya.but to know if a girl likes you tell her that you like her.if she smiles and blushes you got her.but i admit,that requires balls.and brains.tell her when she's a little lonely.trust me,it'll be a one time investment.ask her.ASK HER!\\n\\nbut i warn you donot try to kiss her or grope her if you are in a country which isin't like america.like india,pakistan,china,japan,etc.", "Talk to parents. I know it's hard but try to ignore her by not being around her. Sounds like she is very unhappy and becoming a bully. Try to talk to her about how you feel too, but definitely let parents know of her abuse.", "If she's already his ex, there shouldn't be a problem. All girls are like that, you know, I know, so we have to take things our girl way.\\nYou have a talk with his ex since he can't do much. Sit her down and make sure she listens to you. Just let her know what it feels like if she's in your situation. I'm sure she'll want the same help as you right now.\\nMake her understand but do it in a polite way no matter how much you want to get rid of her. If you don't do it that way, she might not listen and will tend to make it worst. \\nDon't push it too. Just go with the flow and take your time. I'm sure somehow, someway, she'll understand.\\nGood luck!!", "Wow thats sounds like some powerful love...and i dont really know how to answer your question because i dont know what or how far you think you have to go to make her happy!! But If u love her and only her than i think you should try whatever you can to keep her!!! But with that i also want to say that you should love yourself aswell...and remember if your not happy 2 then it isnt worth it!! She has to do whatever SHE can to make you happy as well!!! Its relationship and its sounds like you love her very much but its supposed to be 50/50!! Good luck ....and its hard to find true love so dont just let it go!", "Well, his message sounds so overtly loving that it really may just be a sister-like friendship. If you've already talked to him about it to show your care, which is a good thing, how about getting to know the friend better? After all, if she's like a sister, and you two have been dating that long, it would make sense that he'd want you and the friend to become friends, too. He probably wants the friend to like you as much as he does and secretly get her approval. If he gets very uncomfortable with the idea of you and the girl getting close or hanging out, maybe there's something more to worry about. In the meantime, it might be fun to get to know her. And honestly, if the three of you are hanging out and then your guy goes home with YOU, you'll feel that little win inside. Also, he might talk about you to her just as much as he does about her to you, so there's a happy possibility.", "part of the reason for a woman to have an orgasm has to do with her own ability to turn herself on...in addition when the woman is being touched by the guy and she feels how much this guy desires her...that also makes her feel very femenine thus contributing to her potential to have multiple orgasms (5 to 8) in a lapse 1 hour.I mean there are many things in play here. to desire and to be desired, to love and to feel loved,romance(not for everyone),foreplay, fellatio,cunnilingus, touching, teasing each other...etc,etc.(if a woman is not in touch with her femenine animalistic drives that makes it a bit difficult for her) but there are also guys who really dont know how to please women so you get what we have here with you. Reciprocal attraction, sexual communication are very important to a healthy sexual and orgasmic relationship. then there is also that idea that to some women matters. meaning that some women girls...you know what I'm talking about (Size)...so I don't know how the shoe fits on you...good lick...i mean luck...I hope that you areable to get many orgasms.practice with yourself.", "You want her back bro. This is man to man sh*t here. Blow her off. Seriously, just trust my advice and blow her off. Pretend you are on and better off and she will see that and realize you are intriguing to her again and she will start talking to you again. But play semi hard to get with her. Take it like you don't give a damn about nothing and if you 2 ever get together again it doesn't make a differance to you. But try to be exciting around her. Do something you normally wouldn't do. Take a chance and make sure she sees it or knows about it. You can handle it. Woman are complex creatures but once you know how to get through to them, you are golden for life. Well until they catch on to your knowledge of their ways.", "How will you know if you don't talk to her?", "Does your mother know that you now know she is a man ? If so, talk to her about it with an open mind. If she/he has not abused you and have been a loving parent, that is most important than gender. You may need counseling to help with the process. You did not indicate your age, so, I do not know how much you can do without her approval.", "You work your way up to it. Sex begins in the kitchen. Serve her breakfast. Prepare her bath water to take her out on a date. Buy her a pair of shoes. Always compliment before she asks. Use the words, \"I'd like to talk to you.\" Women love to talk. After winding down from all the outside stuff youve done with her.....begin massaging her......caress her slowly.....then let her know....softly....how much you want her.", "How do you get a girl to love you??? Show her that you care without taking up all her space. Tell her how you feel without coming off too strong. Do LITTLE things for her and then she will do the same.", "(Don't listen to to all of them answers. Some of these folks are morons)\\nBut it sounds like Indian boys and girls are both shy. I'm Black and I dated an Indian girl. They're just like other girls. Actually, they're closer to white American girls from suburbia.\\nBasically, all you need to do is show confidence and honesty. Women love that. Girls don't. If you're looking for a girl, try to impress her, but don't try too hard. Try something like compliment her hair or eyes to let her know you notice her. Spark a convo by using your surroundings. Like if she's looking at a painting, or watching an activity, or her even her accessories.\\n*What ever you do, don't studder. haha", "Well, if you have a talent, show it off. Girls are interested in guys who have unique talents. I'm not talking about being able to squirt milk from your eyes. I'm talking about respectable talents. For example, if you know how to draw, show her your drawings or if you can cook, invite her over for dinner. Stuff like that.", "First of all, it's not wrong !! Don't ever say that b/c thats just what others believe. If you two been together for 3 months and you honestly really care for one another than you are going to have to talk to her and let her know how you feel about the whole situation. It shouldn't really matter what religion she chooses to go to b/c if she really loves you and you really love her then why should either of you allow a book that someone else wrote run you guys relationship down. If you feel that she deserves you and that you deserve her and yall make each other happy then GIRL please live life the best way known how b/c to be real with you, you know like I know that we are only granted with one life to live!!!!!!You midestwell live it being happy, you aren't hurting anyone else by doing that!!\\nGOOD LUCK ON YOUR RELATIONSHIP!!!!!!", "It all depends on what you want, and are looking for. It's not like she did all these things while she was with you, t's not like she cheated. Do you think she has changed? It's really up to you... I think that you need to talk to her and tell her how you feel." ]

[ "HO CHI MINH CITY - Vietnam prepared to welcome on Friday the arrival of a United Airlines jumbo jet making the first passenger flight by an American carrier to the communist nation since the fall of Saigon in 1975." ]

[ "HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam -- A US passenger jet landed in Vietnam on Friday, the first since the Vietnam War ended nearly 30 years ago.", "For the first time since the war ended nearly 30 years ago, a US passenger jet landed in Vietnam today. United Airlines Flight 869 took off from San Francisco yesterday and arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly", "SAN FRANCISCO - A United Airlines jumbo jet took off from San Francisco at the start of the historic first US commercial flight to Vietnam since the fall of Saigon nearly 30 years ago.", "Vietnamese-Americans living in St. Cloud are heralding the flight of the first US passenger jet to land in their homeland since the Vietnam War ended almost 30 years ago.", "A United Airlines plane landed in Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City on Friday, the first commercial American airliner to fly to the country since the Vietnam War.", "_ For the first time since 1975, a US passenger jet is flying from the US directly to Vietnam. The United Air Lines flight with 347 aboard took off from San Francisco today and is scheduled", "United Airlines on Thursday launched the first daily flight service to Vietnam from the United States since 1975.", "HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam The first US passenger jet to fly to Vietnam in almost 30 years is on the ground in Ho Chi Minh City. United Airlines Flight 869 landed in Vietnam about 7:00 this morning after leaving San Francisco yesterday.", "The first US passenger flight to Vietnam since 1975 shows bilateral ties are &quot;right on track&quot; between old battlefield foes who still spar over human", "HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam -- United Airlines became the first US carrier to fly to Vietnam since the war ended nearly 30 years ago, marking a new milestone in relations between the former enemies as dignitaries on board were greeted at the airport with lotus blossoms and silk lanterns.", "United Airlines (UA) on Thursday launched the first daily flight service to Vietnam from the United States since 1975. The flight represents the first such service by an American air carrier since the end", "US aerospace giant Boeing is preparing to begin assembly of its first 787 Dreamliner passenger jet.", "The first U.S. passenger flight to Vietnam since 1975 shows bilateral ties are \"right on track\" between old battlefield foes who still spar over human rights and trade, a Vietnamese spokeswoman said on Thursday.", "HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam The last time a US passenger plane landed there, it was Saigon. Today, the first US commercial flight to Vietnam in nearly 30 years arrived in Ho Chi Minh City.", "SAN FRANCISCO A United Airlines plane has taken off on the first direct flight from the United States to Vietnam in almost three decades.", "United Airlines Thursday launched the first scheduled flight of a US airline to Vietnam in almost 30 years. &quot;Today&#39;s launch of direct service to Vietnam marks an historic step in the relationship between the", "World News, HO CHI MINH CITY, A United Airlines plane has landed in Vietnam&#39;s Ho Chi Minh City, the first commercial American airliner to fly to the country since the Vietnam War.", "In Friday&#39;s national and international briefs, the first direct flight from the United States to Vietnam since 1975 is underway, Cpl.", "For the first time since the Vietnam War ended, a US commercial airliner landed in Vietnam on Friday night, marking another milestone in the improving relations between two former enemies.", "THE first commercial flight between the United States and Vietnam since their war 30 years ago landed yesterday to open a new chapter of cultural and economic exchange between the former foes.", "A US navy warship arrives in a Cambodian port, the first to dock there since the Vietnam war.", "The first commercial flight from the United States to Vietnam since the war nearly 30 years ago has taken off from San Francisco. The new service to Ho Chi Minh City, run by United Airlines, will fly daily.", "United Airlines began service between San Francisco and Vietnam Thursday, the first such regular flight to the Asian country in 30 years.", "Continental Airlines has become the first US carrier to order Boeing&#39;s 7E7 passenger jet in a deal worth USD1.3 bn at current list prices.", "SEATTLE, United States - Vietnam Airlines has agreed to buy four wide-bodied Boeing 7E7 Dreamliner jets with a sticker price of around 500 million dollars.", "Description: United Airlines begins the first American direct commercial flights to Vietnam. Commentator Andrew Lam, who was on the last cargo plane out of Vietnam at the end of the war 30 years ago, boards", "The Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger jet, took to the sky with a full load of passengers for the first time Monday, and the European aircraft maker announced further management changes in the wake of costly delays to the $13 billion jet program.", "The A380 super-jumbo passenger jet, due to be officially unveiled next week, was wheeled out of its hangar in southwestern France for the first time.", "The first Airbus A380 super jumbo passenger jet is towed inside a hangar in Blagnac, near Toulouse, southwestern France, Saturday, Jan.", "With fanfare and an appearance by actor David Hasselhoff, a United Airlines flight headed for Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday - the first direct flight from the United States to Vietnam in almost three decades.", "Three more suspects in an alleged plot to blow up US-bound passenger jets appeared in a London court after being charged with preparing acts of terrorism.", "HANOI : Vietnam Airlines took delivery of a brand new Boeing 777-200ER, the final aircraft of a four-jet deal guaranteed by the official US export credit agency the Export-Import Bank." ]

[ "Science journalist and author Robert Wright says that Buddhist meditation might help counteract our natural tendency towards unhappiness and dissatisfaction. His new book is 'Why Buddhism is True.' Also John Powers reviews the new Criterion release of Albert Brooks' 1985 film 'Lost in America.'" ]

[ "Three experts on Buddhism — a scholar, and anthropologist, and a former monk and translator for the Dalai Lama — talk to Bill McQuay about the finer points of some of the religion's core concepts, such as reincarnation and karma. Learn more about each expert, and hear them address how making pilgrimages like the journey around Kawakarpo are central to the faith:", "NPR's Michele Kelemen reports on a Buddhist revival in the far east city of Ulan-Ude ten years after the collapse of communism. Buddhism is recognized as one of the four major religions in Russia with approximately one million believers.", "Thomas Dyer is preparing to deploy with the Tennessean National Guardsman as the Army's first Buddhist chaplain. Dyer, a former Southern Baptist minister, says he was drawn to Buddhism through meditation and explains how he will apply the principles of his faith as a spiritual counselor for the troops.", "More Americans are practicing Buddhism, which has specific teachings on death, dying and an afterlife. There&#8217;s an increasing need for Buddhist spiritual counseling, but few hospitals with Buddhist chaplains on staff. There&#8217;s only one place in the country that trains fully accredited Buddhist chaplains, Karen Michel reports for Here & Now. Note: This story was produced with support from New America Media, the Gerontological Society of America and the Archstone Foundation. Reporter\n\nKaren Michel, freelance reporter.", "As part of our series on new religious movements, NPR's Mandalit del Barco explores a modern version of Buddhism known as Soka Gakkai. It's an import from Asia, brought to the United States by Japanese war brides. In the 1960s, it caught on with anti-war hippies. Now it has more than 300,000 adherents in the United States, most of them middle class, from all ethnic groups.", "An American monk is now leading one of the most important monasteries in Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lama appointed Nicholas Vreeland as the abbot of a southern Indian monastery to help bridge Buddhist tradition with the Western world. Vreeland talks with host Michel Martin about what it means to be an American holding such an important post.", "Commentator Peter Trachtenberg remembers the summer he was sixteen years old, and a devotee of Zen Buddhism. The problem is, he had some other habits distinctly at odds with the aim of becoming freed from his wants and desires. [4:00]", "Talk of the Nation continues its series on sacred texts with a discussion about the Dhammapada, the most beloved of all Buddhist scriptures. Opening with the words, All we are is the result of what we have thought , the Dhammapada is a collection of the Buddha's sayings, teaching mindfulness and heightened awareness of self. Join Ray Suarez and his guests as they continue their spiritual and historical journey of the world's holy books. Guests: Joseph Goldstein Teacher and Founder, Insight Meditation Society, Barre, MA Author Insight Meditation , The Experience of Insight and Seeking the Heart of Wisdom Robert Thurman Professor of Buddhist Studies, Columbia University, New York City, NY Author Essential Tibetan Buddhism (Harper Collins) and Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bantam) Listeners call in", "Psychologist MARK EPSTEIN. His new book is \"Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy From a Buddhist Perspective\" (Basic Books). EPSTEIN discovered both Buddhism and psychology in college and combines Eastern spirituality and Western psychology to help patients reach solutions to their problems. (REBROADCAST FROM 7", "When discussions about science and religion turn into debates about science versus religion, Buddhism mostly gets a pass. Thanks to the work of the Dalai Lama and others, Buddhism can seem far friendlier to modern, scientifically minded sensibilities than the Abrahamic religions. This alignment with science is strengthened by the widespread adoption of mindfulness techniques — often derived from Buddhist and other contemplative practices — in domains like medicine and psychology. So with its supposed empirical emphasis on internal investigation, one might wonder if Buddhism is really a religion at all or, at least, in the same sense as Western monotheistic traditions. Maybe it's better described as a kind of \"science of happiness?\" Robert Sharf is a scholar of Buddhist studies at UC Berkeley and he has, apparently, heard this kind of question before. I was recently introduced to Sharf's insightful writings via discussions about Buddhism and cognitive science with philosopher Evan Thompson, who has been doing his own work in these domains. For Sharf, the easy identification of Buddhism as a kind of inward-directed science of the mind represents a particular reading of its long and diverse traditions. Most importantly, what we get in the West is, for Sharf, a kind of \"Buddhist Modernism.\" In particular, the affinity Buddhism is supposed to have with science is, for Sharf, a very specific consequence of Buddhism's historical encounter with the West — and to miss that history would be to miss the richer veins of meaning in Buddhism as a religion. In a 2007 interview with Tricycle magazine, Sharf pointed to the response of Buddhists in countries like Japan and Sri Lanka during their encounters with Western culture in late 1800s. These nations were already being rocked by modernization and/or colonization. At the same time, the West was undergoing its own religious transformations. According to Sharf, Protestants during this period were confronting a \"crisis of faith\" due to the rise of science. This led to new ways of thinking that tried to mesh Christianity more smoothly with science and its rational worldview. In this way, a confluence of Asian and Western interests began that would help shape a new vision of Buddhism. As Sharf puts it: \"...the critiques of religion that originated in the West resonated with [Buddhist's] own needs as they struggled with cultural upheavals in their homelands. [While] for Westerners, Buddhism seemed to provide an attractive spiritual alternative to their own seemingly moribund religious traditions. The irony, of course, is that the Buddhism to which these Westerners were drawn was one already transformed by its contact with the West.\" It is this transformed tradition with its affinity with science that modern Americans are encountering. Sharf is not the only one to make this point. In his book The Scientific Buddha Donald S. Lopez, Jr., a professor in the department of Asian languages at the University of Michigan, also sees a lot of selection in what comprises Western Buddhism. In his words: \"For the Buddha to be identified as an ancient sage fully attuned to the findings of modern science, it was necessary that he first be transformed into a figure who differed in many ways from the Buddha who has been revered by Buddhists across Asia over the course of many centuries.\" Of course, by its very nature, religion, all religions, are changed by their encounters with new cultures. This is particularly true of Buddhism and its steady march eastward from its birth in India 2,500 years ago. Religions always have a way of outgrowing their own scriptural and ritual basis, while simultaneously holding on to them. As author Karen Armstrong has shown, practitioners in any age are always selecting out those parts of their religions that are meaningful to them while ignoring the parts that seem dated. She called the process \"creative misreading.\" Sharf has no problem with the creative misreading that allows Buddhist Modernism to share space with scientific worldviews. \"My concern,\" he told Tricycle, \"is not with the selectivity of those who read Buddhism as a rationalist and scientific religion — it is perfectly understandable given the world in which we live. It is really not a question of misreading. It is a question of what gets lost in the process.\" Part of the problem for Sharf and others is that by focusing only on the domains of inner experience (i.e. mindfulness via contemplative practice), Buddhist Modernism loses aspects of its function that were central to its history. \"Look at how suspicious many Western Buddhists are of religious ritual,\" he says in the Tricycle interview, \"... when we downplay ritual, we risk weakening our bonds to community and tradition. That's a pretty major loss.\" But just as important for both Sharf and Lopez are the tensions that they think should exist between the Buddhist and Western worldviews. As Lopez puts it: \"If an ancient religion like Buddhis", "It's been more than a week since Fox News Channel's Brit Hume gave disgraced golfer Tiger Woods advice that essentially urged him to ditch Buddhism and find Christianity. He says Christianity was the only way to recovery. Host Michel Martin talks with Washington Post columnist about the backlash that Hume has received and how Hume's comments shined light on true intolerance.", "Are human beings hard-wired to be perpetually dissatisfied? Author Robert Wright, who teaches about the interface of evolutionary biology and religion, thinks so. Wright points out that evolution rewards people for seeking out pleasure rather than pain, which helps ensure that human beings are frequently unsatisfied: \"We are condemned to always want things to be a little different, always want a little more,\" he says. \"We're not designed by natural selection to be happy.\" But all is not lost. In his new book, Why Buddhism is True, Wright makes the case that some Buddhist practices can help humans overcome the biological pull towards dissatisfaction. \"I think of mindfulness meditation as almost a rebellion against natural selection,\" he says. \"Natural selection is the process that created us. It gave us our values. It sets our agenda, and Buddhism says, 'We don't have to play this game.' \" Interview Highlights On how natural selection is at odds with the Buddhist notion that pleasure is fleeting This was in the Buddha's first sermon after his enlightenment is that a big source of our suffering is that we crave things, we want things, but then the gratification tends not to last. So we find ourselves in a state of almost perennial dissatisfaction. And, in fact, people may have heard that Buddhism says that life is full of suffering, and it's true that suffering is the translation of the word dukkha. It's a respectable translation, but a lot of people think that that word would be just as well translated as \"unsatisfactoryness.\" Certainly when you think about the logic of natural selection, it makes sense that we would be like this. Natural selection built us to do some things, a series of things that help us get genes into the next generation. Those include eating food so we stay alive, having sex — things like that. If it were the case that any of these things brought permanent gratification, then we would quit doing them, right? I mean, you would eat, you'd feel blissed out, you'd never eat again. You'd have sex, you'd, like, lie there basking in the afterglow, never have sex again. Well, obviously that's not a prescription for getting genes into the next generation. So natural selection seems to have built animals in general to be recurrently dissatisfied. And this seems to be a central feature of life — and it's central to the Buddhist diagnosis of what the problem is. On how to approach physical pain with mindfulness A basic principle of mindfulness meditation is to not run away from feelings that you normally run away from. By \"run away from\" I mean you're averse to them. Like, if you feel anxiety or physical pain, you want it to go away. You want to do something that makes it go away. And the idea of mindfulness meditation is that you actually sit there — kind of observe the feeling, experience the feeling — and ironically, that can give you a kind of critical distance from it, a kind of detachment from it. So not running away from the pain or the emotional distress, or whatever, can, through meditative practice, disempower the pain or the distress. On how Buddhist meditation can counteract the biological pull towards dissatisfaction What I can say about meditation is that it attacks the levers that natural selection kind of uses to control us, at a very fundamental level. ... By our nature we just seek good feelings and avoid bad feelings, that's just our nature. Buddhism diagnosed this as kind of a problem and remarkably came up with a technique that allows you to actually disempower those levers, to no longer respond to the fundamental incentive structure of trying to avoid painful feelings and try to always seek the thing that promises to be gratifying. That's an amazing thing — that it can work. On how cognitive behavioral therapy and Buddhism work together Cognitive Behavioral Therapy works by kind of interrogating people about the logic behind things like fears and anxieties, like, Is there really much of a chance of you projectile vomiting while speaking to a crowd? You've never done it before. ... So there's a suspicion there about the logic behind feelings. Well, in Buddhism there's a suspicion of the logic behind feelings more broadly, I would say. But as a practical matter, Buddhism works at the level of feeling. They don't interrogate the logic explicitly, but you deal with the feeling itself in a way that disempowers it. And there's a kind of bridge between cognitive therapy and Buddhist practice in evolutionary psychology; because evolutionary psychology explains that, indeed, a lot of the feelings we have are not worth following, for various reasons. They may have literally been designed to mislead us to begin with by natural selection. ... We live in an environment so different from the environment that natural selection designed us for that we have these counterproductive feelings, like fear of public speaking. So evolutionary psychology gives a back story, explaining why it i", "In <em>How to Love</em>, Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh instructs on the essentials of mindfulness practice and understanding the many different kinds of love. It appears at No. 14.", "Thousands of Japan's historic Buddhist temples are expected to shut down. NPR's Rachel Martin speaks with Ian Reader, an expert on Japanese culture, on how Buddhism is changing in the country.", "Have you heard the one about the South Korean tourist in India who is suing a monkey who stole his glasses? Incredibly, it's a true story.", "Here is one thing author Robert Wright and I agree on when it comes to Buddhist meditation: It's really, really boring. At least, it's boring in the beginning. But there is another thing we agree on, too. That initial meditative boredom is actually a door. It's an opening that can lead us to something essential, and essentially true, that Buddhism has to teach us about being human. Wright's insight on this point is just one of the many truths in his delightfully personal, yet broadly important, new book Why Buddhism Is True. The \"true\" in Wright's title doesn't refer to the traditional kinds of scriptural truths we think of when we think of religions and truth. Wright is explicitly not interested in the traditional aspects of Buddhism as a religion. The book, for example, makes no claims about reincarnation or Tibetan rainbow bodies or the like. Instead, Wright wants to focus on Buddhism's diagnosis of the human condition. The part that is relevant to the here and now. It's Buddhism's take on our suffering, our anxiety and our general dis-ease that Wright wants to explore because that is where he sees its perspective lining up with scientific fields like evolutionary psychology and neurobiology. To his credit, Wright is more than cognizant that exploring just these aspects of Buddhism means he is filtering out quite a bit of its history. As he reminds his readers: \"Two of the most common Western conceptions of Buddhism — that it's atheistic and that it revolves around meditation — are wrong; most Asian Buddhists do believe in gods, though not an omnipotent creator God, and don't meditate.\" Wright also acknowledges that even within this \"scientific\" Buddhism he is interested in, there are also enormous differences between various philosophical schools of thought, many with 1,000-year histories. \"I'm not getting into super-fine-grained parts of Buddhist psychology and philosophy,\" he tells us. \"For example, the Abhidhamma Pitaka, a collection of early Buddhist texts, asserts that there are eighty-nine kinds of consciousness, twelve of which are unwholesome. You may be relieved to hear that this book will spend no time trying to evaluate that claim.\" I was happy to see Wright address these issues of history and interpretation head-on. No matter where Buddhism's encounter with the West takes it, ignoring history doesn't do anyone any good (I've tried to explore these issues myself here at 13.7 and elsewhere, including here and here). But with those important caveats, Wright is then forceful in his main argument that \"Buddhism's diagnosis of the human predicament is fundamentally correct, and that its prescription is deeply valid and urgently important.\" To back up this claim, Wright leans heavily on evolutionary psychology, which he says, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, \"is the study of how the human brain was designed — by natural selection — to mislead us, even enslave us.\" That misleading and enslaving, however, is all in the service of getting our genes into the next generation. As he writes: \"Don't get me wrong: natural selection has its virtues, and I'd rather be created by it than not be created at all — which, so far as I can tell, are the two options this universe offers.\" These lines give you hint of Wright's tone throughout the book. He is very funny and uses his own experiences to drive to the book's questions. In particular, it was his first experience at a week-long meditation intensive two decades ago that launched his journey into Buddhism and \"contemplative practice\" (i.e. meditation). His accounts of time spent on \"the cushion\" are full of self-effacing humor and real insights. Wright's main point is that evolution hardwires us with intense emotions that are in fact delusions. (He has discussed this in an interview with Fresh Air's Terry Gross.) They developed as survival responses to the environments we evolved in and they were tuned to those environments. Now they just don't make sense and need to be seen for what they are. As he puts it: \"These feelings — anxiety, despair, hatred, greed — ... have elements of delusion, elements you'd be better off without. And if you think you would be better off, imagine how the whole world would be. After all, feelings like despair and hatred and greed can foster wars and atrocities. So if what I'm saying is true — if the basic sources of human suffering and human cruelty are indeed in large part the product of delusion — there is value in exposing this delusion to the light.\" According to Wright, Buddhism, at least its more contemplative side, offers specific insights into, and a path out of, these delusions. In particular, the direct experiences gained via contemplative practice can, he says, weaken the hold of these evolutionary once-needed delusions. In the process, Wright argues, we can all learn to wreak a little less havoc on ourselves and the rest of the world. As he puts it: \"There are other spiritual traditions that address the human predicam", "Taliban leaders recently ordered the destruction of two ancient statues of Buddha, carved into a mountain in the third and fifth centuries. The monuments are considered offensive to Islam. But commentator Andrew Lam knows smashing a physical statue will not erase the spiritual message of Buddhism.", "Religion scholar Karen Armstrong. The best-selling author of <EM>The History of God,</EM> and <EM>The Battle for God,</EM> has a new book about the life of Buddha. From North India, Sidhatta Gotama, renounced normal life, leaving his wife and child to live alone and attain enlightenment. He found it through his own experiences, did not rely on a supernatural God, and fought against the cult of personality that would turn him into a leader. Instead the Buddha taught his disciples to discover the truth within themselves. His teachings flourished in India for 1500 years and then spread to Tibet, Central Asia, China, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Armstrong's book <EM>Buddha</EM> is published by Penguin Lives.", "Part 4 of the TED Radio Hour episode Just A Little Nicer. About Karen Armstrong's TED Talk Religion scholar Karen Armstrong describes how compassion is the core principle in all world religions, in the form of the golden rule. About Karen Armstrong Karen Armstrong is the author of numerous books on religion and compassion, including The Case for God, Twelve Steps To A Compassionate Life, Fields of Blood, and The Great Transformation. In 2008 she was awarded the TED Prize and began working with TED on the Charter for Compassion, created online by the general public, and crafted by leading thinkers in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Also in 2008, she was awarded the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Medal. In 2013, she received the British Academy's inaugural Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Transcultural Understanding.", "It began 2,500 years ago in Northern India.  Over the centuries it spread ever eastward.  Moving south it moved into Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.  Moving north it reached Tibet and then expanded across into China, Korea and Japan.  Every culture it touched, it changed.  And yet it was also changed in the process.  Now its circumnavigation is complete.  Buddhism has reached the West -- the scientific, rational-minded West -- and once again there are changes afoot. The question is what kind of changes and for whose benefit? Last week, I had the pleasure of traveling to Bangkok to attend a conference on Science and Buddhism. It was my first trip to Asia and there was enough eye-popping marvel to fill a few posts on the different trajectories we humans have taken in building our great civilizations. But today I want to focus on why a bunch of scientists journeyed halfway around the globe to present talks on topics as diverse as the origin of life and the fate of the cosmos.  The talks were not just for our own benefit but were part of a meeting with monks and religious scholars (and HRH, the Princess of Thailand). The first wave of interest in \"Science and Buddhism\" began in the 1970s and focused on quantum mechanics. It was, to my mind, mostly silly.  The emphasis was on how quantum physics, with its uncertainty principle and wave function collapse, was somehow embracing ancient truths of eastern religion.  This approach reached the heights of wackiness with the infamous movie What the Bleep Do We Know.  The great problem with this train of thought was it assumed the answer it wanted to find in the first place. Quantum mechanics doesn't say Buddhism is true. It doesn't say anything.  It's a calculus that is open to many interpretations from the mundane (statistical approaches) to the mind-blowing (the many worlds interpretation).  While finding proof that mind affects subatomic behavior would be thrilling, such proof simply does not exist. Now however things have sobered up. Read More The real place for Buddhism and Science to begin their discussions is the nature of the Mind.  After all, Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, claimed to have found a way out of the suffering humans are heir to and his prescription was centered exactly and explicitly on an investigation of Mind.  For 2,500 years the various Buddhist practices from Vipassina in Thailand to Zen in Japan have focused on a direct observation of, and investigation into, consciousness. A number of talks focused on the way neuroscience and Buddhism can talk fruitfully together. Mario Beauregard, of the Neuroscience Research Center at the University of Montreal, spoke of his functional MRI studies exploring how the brain changes during contemplative practice (meditation).  The indefatigable B. Allan Wallace spoke of creating a \"graduate program\" for training contemplative observers who could work with scientists in studying the Mind.  Considering how young our studies of consciousness are adding trained \"internal observers\" to the mix, and unpacking the 2,500 years of insight into the nature of consciousness that Buddhism, holds seemed exciting indeed. But there was more.  By its nature the Buddhist perspective is holistic and many of the researchers were, each in their own way, speaking to that holism as it manifested in their research.  Pier Luigi Luisi from the University of Rome spoke of the human genome and human evolution.  Dennis Noble of Oxford University spoke on the definitions of life in a cellular/bio-chemical context.  What was heartening was that the goal in these presentations was not to show how new theories embraced Buddhist worldviews but to ask deeper questions about perspectives and guiding metaphors. And, of course, no discussion of Buddhism can miss the point that the goal of whole endeavor is to alleviate suffering.  \"To save all beings\" is a classic Buddhist phrase and appropriately talks on political and management science were also included with special emphasis on how Buddhist perspectives can support sustainable cultures. For my part, I was asked to simply present the modern story of cosmology.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  It was happy to help.  The fact that no interpretation was asked for spoke volumes about the intentions. When we discuss science and religion, as we so often do in this blog, we usually focus on the conflict model that has been the public norm in this country.  The problem with including Buddhism in the mix of our discussions of science and religion is that its most visible public entrance into the debate had been through the quantum mechanics and physical sciences.  This is, to my mind, the wrong gate.  Hopefully that era has passed and a new and more meaningful discussion can begin that will be fruitful and enlightening for everyone.", "In Bangkok, monks in saffron robes marched and rode on elephants to the Thai parliament to call on legislators to make Buddhism the national religion. Thailand is rewriting its constitution to replace the one discarded when the army seized power last year. This would be Thailand's 18th constitution since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932. But not all Thais think declaring a state religion is a good idea.", "The dominant faiths in America today include the Roman Catholic Church, Protestant Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. But an incredibly diverse range of smaller, less-known religions are flourishing, too. Sociologists say about 20 new religions pop up each year in the United States. Some survive; some live only for a season. In a four-part series, NPR explores some of the new religious trends. Part 1: The Trends Religions adapt and arise to reflect changing times. NPR's Barbara Bradley Hagerty starts the series with a look at why new religions can be influential -- even if they're short-lived. Part 2: The Toronto Blessing Bradley Hagerty reports on The Toronto Blessing, the fastest growing Christian church. Pentecostal worshippers display a personal, physical connection with God through manifestations such as speaking in tongues and barking like dogs. Part 3: Soka Gakkai NPR's Mandalit del Barco explores a modern version of Buddhism known as Soka Gakkai. It was brought to the United States by Japanese war brides, and in the 1960s, it caught on with hippies. Now it has more than 300,000 adherents in the United States, most of them middle class, from all ethnic groups. Part 4: Teens and Wicca In the last installment, Bradley Hagerty looks at the popularity of Wicca, or witchcraft, among young people. Teens seem to be drawn to Wicca, among other reasons, because it can be tailored to the individual's needs. Some of the teens' parents are Wiccans themselves. But other parents are alarmed.", "The word \"punk\" doesn't usually bring to mind meditation. But the growing popularity of Buddhism in the U.S. is attracting an unlikely fan base among punk rock enthusiasts. What does punk rock have to do with Buddhism? \"There's a disdain for authority. There's a strong sense that the individual is responsible for herself or for himself,\" says Brad Warner, a bona fide punk rocker and ordained Zen master. The former bassist of Ohio-based punk rock band Zero Defex is also the author of two books on the subject: Sit Down and Shut Up, which promises \"Punk Rock commentaries on Buddha, God, truth, sex, death,\" and Hardcore Zen, which explores Buddhism and punk's overlapping approaches to rebellion. At some point in a Zen master's day, Warner admits, the punk rock needs to turn off. \"I have practiced zazen [which literally means \"seated meditation\"] in punk rock houses full of filth and garbage, but it's much more difficult,\" he says. Noah Levine, author of the memoir Dharma Punx, doesn't quite fit the Buddhist stereotype either. Some people might be put off by his shaved head, silver tooth and his tattoo-covered body — hardly what one might expect from a teacher of Buddhism. But a closer look reveals that the tattoos reflect his Buddhist lifestyle. The left side of his neck reads, \"Dharma Punx,\" with \"dharma\" meaning truth in Sanskrit; and the right side reads, \"Against the Stream,\" referring to his meditation society. Although his father is an American Buddhist author and teacher, Levine embraced the practice only after hitting rock bottom in jail. Levine, who says he started doing drugs by the time he was 10, spent his teens as a crack addict. \"I came to meditation practice, to Buddhism, strung out on drugs, filled with rage,\" he says. Now 20 years sober, Levine's group teaches meditation to convicts, the homeless and other groups of people. Levine's method, summed up in his new book, Against the Stream, has attracted thousands of students all over North America and Europe. His ethic is also captured in a new documentary film titled Meditate and Destroy, about punk rock, spirituality and inner rebellion. Levine says there is always a bit of struggle with meditation, which is another thing that makes it akin to punk mentality. \"Here in meditation, we say, 'Stop thinking, pay attention to the breath.' And your mind says, 'F*** you. I will do whatever I want,'\" says Levine. \"We begin to understand that it is inner anarchy.\" The classic U.K. punk band the Sex Pistols definitely wasn't made up of Buddhists, but they might have liked what some Zen masters say: Our rule is no rule.", "Earlier this week Fox Correspondent Brit Hume suggested that amidst the Tiger Woods scandal, that Tiger should look toward Christianity for redemption rather Buddhism. But aren't both practices capable of offer it followers redemption? Host Michel Martin speaks with Buddhist Blogger Ethan Nichtern to find out more about Buddhism and redemption.", "Part 5 of the TED Radio Hour episode Making Sense of 2020 During the coronavirus pandemic, monk JayaShri Maathaa continually turned to one powerful mantra: \"thank you,\" a statement of genuine gratitude to provide solace and strength in troubled times. About JayaShri Maathaa JayaShri Maathaa, formerly known as Jayamini D Samarathunge, is a spiritual teacher and monk trained in Buddhist teachings. Maathaa is the founder of Mind Designs International, which offers professional neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and Reiki training programs in Sri Lanka. She conducts intensive online group coaching programs, interactive work with her inner circle, leads meditation groups, and makes discourses available via the Internet. Before dedicating her life to Buddhism and becoming a monk, she completed her MBA (HRM) at the Postgraduate Institute of Management in Sri Lanka, and obtained her NLP Certification from the Worldwide Institute of NLP.", "Part 3 of the TED Radio Hour episode A Better You. About Andy Puddicombe's TED Talk After ten years as a Buddhist monk, Andy Puddicombe wanted to help other people understand the benefits of meditation. He says just ten minutes a day can give you peace of mind. About Andy Puddicombe Andy Puddicombe spent 10 years training as a Buddhist monk. He co-founded Headspace, an app designed to make meditation more accessible to people in their everyday lives. Puddicombe also writes on the benefits of mindful thinking for healthy living for the Huffington Post and the Guardian.", "The Karmapa, one of the most important leaders in Tibetan Buddhism, is visiting the United States. Some think the young lama will succeed the Dalai Lama as the next spokesman for Tibetan Buddhism and Tibet. Co-host Renee Montagne talks to Robert Thurman, professor of Buddhist studies at Columbia University, about the 22-year-old Karmapa. RENEE MONTAGNE, host: The Dalai Lama is the most recognizable face in Tibetan Buddhism, but another face is becoming known in the West. He is a 22-year-old monk whom followers revere as a reincarnated living Buddha and a master teacher. He's the Karmapa, one of Buddhism's most important spiritual leaders, and he's on an 18 day tour of America. Robert Thurman is a professor of Buddhist studies at Columbia University and joins us to talk about it. Good morning. Professor ROBERT THURMAN (Columbia University): Good morning, Renee. How are you? MONTAGNE: Fine, thank you. Tell us about the school of Buddhism led by this young monk - Ogyen Trinley Dorje. Prof. THURMAN: Yes. Well, he is the third highest Lama in Tibet, traditionally. Nowadays, in exile, he's the second highest, because the Panchen Lama has disappeared somewhere in China. And he's very - already very well learned. He's recovering some of the knowledge of his previous life, according to the Tibetan view. He's a wonderful young fellow, the Karmapa. He escaped on millennium eve from China and reached India and has been there ever since with the Dalai Lama. MONTAGNE: That escape you just mentioned, it's quite interesting. It was dramatic in the way he left Tibet and arrived in India. Tell us a little about it. Prof. THURMAN: Yes. It was very dramatic. He had to escape at night pretending to be on retreat. And he had arranged from different followers in the utmost secrecy that he would be taken to the border. Then he had to hike over the high cliffs. And then on the Nepali side it was arranged to have a helicopter meet him. And they took him to India. So in a way he had a little bit easier time than the normal Tibetan refugee who has to go on foot. But in a way it was more dire, because if he'd been caught it would've been very severe, the consequences. MONTAGNE: The Karmapa was in New York last week, in Bolder, Colorado, over the weekend, and heads for Seattle later this week. Now, he's been talking about spiritual matters, not politics. Prof. THURMAN: Yes. MONTAGNE: But is this trip politically significant, given all that's been happening? Prof. THURMAN: It is a little bit significant in the sense that the hard-line faction within the Chinese leadership that wants to continue to pursue a cultural revolution in Tibet and sort of wipe out Buddhism because they decided that Tibetan Buddhism makes Tibetans feel like they're Tibetans, that leadership is just sort of waiting for the old Dalai Lama to pass away. So the fact that there is a young, very vibrant, very intelligent, very articulate and very charismatic Lama coming up who could step in should something happen - heaven forbid - to the Dalai Lama, this is something that should give those leaders pause. And the India government, therefore, is under pressure to restrict his movements, which they have done. And he's kind of under a pledge not to say anything very stirring that would embarrass the Chinese and that would then annoy the - make the Indians feel pressured. MONTAGNE: And do you think that because of his youth and charisma, the Karmapa will become a leading representative of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism in the years to come? Prof. THURMAN: Oh, absolutely. In any case, he'll become a great teacher within Tibetan Buddhism, I hope. I'm a little worried that because he's so charismatic and so nice and so young, that his followers will push him to rush around and teach everywhere. And I think he needs another few years of more seclusion and study and developing his sort of full understandings before he's overstretched. Then if the Chinese are intelligent, which I think they are, and they decide to dump the hardliners' approach and start a more modern approach and more gentle approach, everything will be solved by the time the Karmapa gets bigger, even before the Dalai Lama goes. And there will be a much nicer, happier relationship between Tibet and China. I'm very confident. MONTAGNE: Thank you for joining us. Prof. THURMAN: Thank you. MONTAGNE: Robert Thurman is a professor of Buddhist studies at Columbia University.", "The Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., is home to the only Buddhist chapel on a U.S. military base. After a controversy over religious intolerance during the summer of 2005, the chapel was built in the basement of the academy's iconic Cadet Chapel. In 2005, conservative evangelical Christians were accused of trying to force their religion on others. According to current and recently graduated cadets, the religious climate has improved substantially since then. Chapel Construction The controversy prompted the Air Force to issue guidelines for religious expression. The military also has made efforts to accommodate all faiths. These include the construction of the 300-square-foot Buddhist chapel at the Air Force Academy paid for by the Frederick P. Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism. The floor is bamboo, and the walls are Port Orford cedar. The focal point is a cherry and ash altar with a Burmese Buddha statue on top. Curiosity Trumps Judgment During services, which are held Wednesday evenings, about half of the 18 pillows on the floor are usually occupied. Tanner Faulkner, an 18-year-old student attending the prep school at the academy, says he feels encouraged to explore his religious curiosity. \"They let us know, 'We have this available for you, and it is possible for you to go to different services, whether you're Jewish faith or Buddhist or Christian or whatever,' \" Faulkner says. Sophomore cadet Dan Dwyer says his fellow cadets seem to have respect for his religion. \"People wonder where I go every Wednesday,\" Dwyer says. \"I tell them I go to the Buddhist service, and it's just more of a curiosity rather than judgment.\" Buddhism And Military Service — A Discordant Pair? Out of 1.4 million people in the military, 5,287 identified themselves as Buddhists as of June 2009. For these folks, questions inevitably arise about whether Buddhism — a pacifist religion — is even compatible with military service. Sarah Bender is the Buddhist program leader at the Air Force Academy. She says she has plenty of questions herself about whether it's ever right to kill in order to stop further harm. But, Bender says, she leaves the academy every Wednesday evening feeling like this is where she's supposed to be. \"People in the military come up — for real — against questions that most of us just consider abstractly,\" Bender says. \"The questions of Buddhism are the questions of life and death. So, where else would you want Buddhism than right there where those questions are most vivid?\" Bender says the academy is now a place where cadets and staff are free to practice any religion they choose.", "A community in Salt Lake City is showing that the Mormon culture might also be fertile soil for Buddhist mindfulness. It's working for both observant Mormons and those who've left the faith.", "Moving from Ursula's thinking about the history of the Universe - which is a map in time - we now take a short tour of the Universe as a map in space. This will be a few minutes of your time well spent. Below is a video put together by the good folks at the American Museum of Natural History, in collaboration with the Rubin Museum of Art. Many of you may remember the Powers of 10 films by Charles and Ray Ames. This work echoes that exploration of scale except here real data is used throughout the animation. In particular the largest scale distributions of galaxies come directly the Sloan Digital Sky Survey which is why all one sees are \"slices\" of universe as the camera pulls out. That is far as we have gotten in mapping the entire sky at those scales. Its worth noting that the sponsor of this project was the Rubin Museum in New York City. The Rubin is a wonderful institution which focuses on Tibetan Buddhist culture, (well worth a visit next time you are in town). They have always been quite interested in exploring the relation between the world views of Buddhism and science. A friend of mine who is a cloud physicist was once asked to give a talk on the physics of rainbows as a complement to a art history talk on the use of rainbows as metaphor for enlightenment in classical Tibetan art. Its a lovely example of those interested in religion also seeing the vision of science. Bravo to the Rubin and the AMNH!", "In an op-ed in last week's Wall Street Journal, Philip Delves Broughton explains how Buddhist monks are rebelling against the military government in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, in a fight for democracy. In his article, \"Up in Alms,\" Broughton states, \"Burma's dictators exploit Buddhism and the monks fight back.\" NEAL CONAN, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Right now, protests and the power of Buddhism in Myanmar. The streets are reportedly quieter in that country after weeks of enormous protests against the military government. The demonstrations were led by tens of thousands of Buddhist monks in saffron-colored robes. And when the military cracked down, many of them were beaten or arrested and some were killed. But in a country where the government uses religion to help justify its power, the monks are now at the center of the fight for Myanmar's future. As Philip Delves Broughton put it, he wrote about that fight and Buddhism's place in it in a piece that ran in the Wall Street Journal last week. He joins us now from our bureau in New York City. And thanks very much for coming in. Mr. PHILIP DELVES BROUGHTON (Author, \"Up in Alms\"): Good afternoon. CONAN: And if there was a choice to be made between the military government and democracy, the monks appear to have chosen. Mr. BROUGHTON: They certainly do. And I think it's been a long struggle for them. I would think it's very easy - it's much easier in the West if you think about the monks and Myanmar more like the Catholic Church than the Dalai Lama. You know, that they're a force in society that has long had to deal with the realities of politics. And this (unintelligible) instances have shown that they struggled very much with themselves. Do they support Aung San Suu Kyi and her struggle for democracy? Or do they bet their survival on a group of generals whose behavior, in many ways, goes against every one of the basic tenets of Buddhism? CONAN: Yet, they've obviously struggled this. They've, for many years, seem to be living quite well alongside the military dictatorship. Mr. BROUGHTON: Well, they've survived. And I think that has always been an issue. I mean they - there are all kinds of tenets of Buddhism - thereabout of Buddhism as practiced in Burma that would go against political involvement. Life is experienced, be lived and suffered. It's merely one phase. One is always striving for nirvana. It's not something where you should complain. And suffering is actually a part of Buddhism. And I think for many of the monks, the situation in Burma has just been something that they deal with and tolerate. But, of course, there comes a point where they can tolerate no longer. They can't cut themselves off from the society they live in. They have to react. And what happened in the past two or three weeks was a provocation of the monks. But it has happened time and again throughout Burma's - certainly in the last hundred years of its history, the monks have been provoked to action. But it takes a lot to do it. And when they do rise up, they're the one force in society left that can really scare the military. CONAN: Mm-hmm, the conscience of the country as you describe them. Mr. BROUGHTON: Well, I think they are. If you look at Burma since 1962 when they've had a military government, almost every other social structure in this country has been gutted. The universities have basically even closed down for many years. The educational structures just barely existent. The civil service has become a military establishment. If you want to be a doctor, you have to serve in the army. So what's left in the country? Well, there's a very strong Buddhist tradition. And there are 400,000 monks, as many as there are soldiers. And so when one looks or hopes that Burma will change, that human rights will be advanced, one has to look them as the conscience of the country and as, really, the only other structure in the country that can stand up to the military. CONAN: Yet their influence is so pervasive that you write the military generals have long used Buddhism themselves. Mr. BROUGHTON: Well, it's extraordinary. If you read the state newspaper, the New Light of Myanmar, almost everyday, the lead photo is one of the general and his wife visiting a temple, paying tribute to the head of the monastery. They constantly guild and re-guild Burma's famous golden pagodas. Temple building was always used by the Burmese kings in previous centuries as a way of, kind of, establishing a claim on territory. So they built temples in northern Thailand just to say we were here once and this is now ours forever. And the generals have done this again in the ethnic territories in Burma. Burma's, you know, essentially, a country that has been in civil war for the last 50 years. And they build temples in areas of the country that are more traditionally Christian or Muslim to, again, establish their control, establish the Burman claim on these ter", "Surrounded by a mountain forest, a Buddhist monastery floats on a lake in the new movie <EM>Spring Summer Fall Winter... and Spring</EM>. Bob Mondello says that within the monastery's walls, director Kim Ki-Duk finds all of life's angers, sorrows and joys." ]

[ "A little boy is in a large toy." ]

[ "A little boy is singing.", "A little boy stands.", "A boy holds a toy stand.", "The little boy is having fun playing with a toy.", "A little boy is holding a toy animal", "A little boy is playing with toys.", "A little boy plays with his toy.", "There is a boy with a toy.", "A little boy shows off a toy.", "A cute little boys loves his toys.", "A little boy is in a floating pool toy", "A woman inflates a toy.", "A boy running with a large inflatable ball.", "A little shirtless boy holding an inflatable ball.", "A boy is boxing with his inflatable \"Hulk\" toy.", "There are boy and a toy.", "A woman is smiling at a little boy.", "A little boy splashing in a blue inflatable pool", "A boy is holding a toy.", "A man is standing near large toys", "A little boy dressed in navy stands and clutches a yellow toy.", "A little boy is watching a toy train", "A child is smiling.", "The smiling little girl holds a toy in her hands.", "The boy is smiling broadly.", "A smiling child is playing.", "The boy is joyful and excited", "the boy has a happy look", "a child in a toy", "A little boy is playing with a toy boat.", "A smiling young boy playing with a toy gun.", "A girl plays in a pool with an inflatable toy." ]

[ "In Britain it is very common for parents from the Indian subcontinent to talk to their children always in English rather than in Urdu, Panjabi, Gujarati etc. They believe that they are doing their children a favour. In fact, first generation British-born South Asians very often go through their entire life speaking English with an Indian accent, acquired from their well-meaning parents." ]

[ "It is possible for some people to think in a second language. And given that you are asking about possibility, to some extent anecdotes are evidence.\n\n\nMany children who change linguistic communities at a young age lose the ability to talk in their first language. This is particularly the case where the first language is different to the language in which parents speak to their children. \nIn less extreme cases I have friends who came to an English speaking country at a young age, but still retained the ability to speak in their native language. Nonetheless, the vast majority of the time, they speak English. I assume that at a certain point, they switched from primarily thinking in their native language to primarily thinking in English. One friend mentioned the experience of when at around age 14, his dreams began to switch from being in Polish to being in English.\n\n\nI guess the interesting question is whether there are limits to this, such as when the second language is not learnt until teenage years or adulthood.\n\nIn terms of a few hypotheses, I would think that ability to think in a second language would be linked to (a) greater fluency with the second language which in turn would be linked to experience and training and (b) specific primary training in the content of the thoughts in the second language (e.g., if you study a subject at university in the second language and thus you may know the terms better in the second language). Also from my limited experience of learning French, it felt like there was a degree of choice whereby I could actively try to think in French. That said, the cognitive associations between underlying concept, English word, and French word were pretty strong. Thus, the subjective experience of thinking in French and translating from English to French was often subtle.\n\nNote also that I'd still be interested in any research that has specifically studied this phenomena.", "In our experience, the main reading-promoting activities at this early age were limited to reading aloud to children. We used good quality books with lots of pictures, often board books. Having the parent engaged in reading is important, so we always had a good supply of children's books that were also interesting to adults.\nAt its best, reading to children can be very interactive and engaging. This helps keeping both the adult and the child focussed on the story. We used different voices, impersonating story characters, and also made plenty of gestures that went along with the story, putting on a bit of a performance. We made pauses to let the child finish the sentences in familiar books (this worked really well with finishing the rhymes in poems). We also made pauses to ask the kids questions. The questions also helped to keep everyone engaged.\nReading to children has good results on subsequent measures of child's achievement, a fact also supported by research (see, for example, Ece Demir-Lira et al, 2019). In addition to this, and much later (between 3 and 4 years of age), we introduced other reading-promoting activities to the children. This included reading games, spelling games, and teaching how to write, and teaching how to read.\nREFERENCES:\n\nTo address this question, we asked whether naturally occurring parent-child book reading interactions between 1 and 2.5 years-of-age predict elementary school language and literacy outcomes, controlling for the quantity of other talk parents provide their children, family socioeconomic status, and children's own early language skill. We find that the quantity of parent-child book reading interactions predicts children's later receptive vocabulary, reading comprehension, and internal motivation to read (but not decoding, external motivation to read, or math skill), controlling for these other factors. Importantly, we also find that parent language that occurs during book reading interactions is more sophisticated than parent language outside book reading interactions in terms of vocabulary diversity and syntactic complexity.\n\nEce Demir-Lira Ö, Applebaum LR, Goldin-Meadow S, Levine SC. Parents' early book reading to children: Relation to children's later language and literacy outcomes controlling for other parent language input. Dev Sci. 2019 May;22(3):e12764. doi: 10.1111/desc.12764. Epub 2019 Jan 15. PMID: 30325107; PMCID: PMC6927670: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30325107/", "One should distinguish between implicit learning and explicit learning. According to Wikipedia, there is no agreed-upon definition of implicit learning, so we assume the following rough definitions of implicit and explicit training:\n\n\nexplicit training is \"training that provides learners with information about (...) grammar rules or directs them so search for rules\", and\nimplicit training is \"training that engages (...) learners with the target language but does not provide any explicit information or direction to search for rules\".\n\n\n(The above definitions are borrowed from \"Explicit and Implicit Second Language Training Differentially Affect the Achievement of Native-like Brain Activation Patterns\" by Morgan-Short et all, 2011; the authors used \"Effectiveness of L2 Instruction: A Research Synthesis and Quantitative Meta‐analysis\" by Norris and Ortega, 2000, as a source.)\n\nChildren start learning their native language long before they begin attending school and they acquire a lot of grammar without being told what the grammar rules are; this is an example of implicit learning. By the time they start attending school at the age of 5 or 6, they already know all the basic grammar rules, even though they can't formulate them explicitly. (Their parents typically can't formulate those rules either, unless they are linguists or language teachers.) This is an example of implicit training. \n\nSchool children don't start learning grammar from scratch; the language teaching at school builds upon a basis that the children already acquired outside school. In order to refine the grammar knowledge that the children already have, teachers provide a lot of explicit training. For example, native speakers of Dutch already know how to say, \"ik rijd\" (I drive/ride), \"jij rijdt\" (you drive/ride) before they go to school. In both cases, the verb (rijd/rijdt) is pronounced exactly the same, but the spelling is different; teachers teach children the rules for the correct spelling of verb forms, e.g. using the mnemonic 't kofschip.\n\nIn some languages, much of the explicit grammar training is tied to\n\n\nmore advanced vocabulary that children need to acquire (e.g. in German: prepositions that should be used with the genitive in formal language, even though they are typically used with the dative in informal language; most German prepositions with the genitive express relationships that children learn later or that they express in less accurate ways);\ngrammar that is required for good writing, e.g. complex syntax and \"text syntax\".\n\n\n(Above, I wrote, \"in some languages, because the amount of explicit grammar learning differs from language to language. For example, at least one of my Chinese tandem partners told me they were never taught grammar in school.)\n\nEven though people forget the explicit rules, this does not mean that this knowledge gets lost, for two reasons:\n\n\nusing the rules repeatedly leads to automation: after a while, you know that a specific expression or structure is correct, because you have used it so often, so forgetting the explicit rule does not a loss of grammar knowledge;\nimplicit learning still continues: the grammatical structures you learn explicitly are also found in spoken and written texts, and since humans are excellent imitators, they continue to learn new grammatical structures outside the classroom.\n\n\nIn short, explicit training of grammar rules is like learning to ride a bike with training wheels. After a while, you have learnt to keep your balance and you can continue without the training wheels.", "To understand how the brain \"knows\" what to do, we can look at how children learn language.\n\nAt first, children randomly create all kinds of sounds, including those that aren't part of the language(s) spoken in their environment. Parents and other people react to these sounds, repeating them, speaking their language, smiling, etc., and the children in turn react to these reactions to their sounds, learning which sound elicit which reactions (e.g. which sounds lead to a smile, which sounds are ignored, etc.), until they slowly begin to build a repertoire of sound and \"pre-words\" which give the most pleasurable results.\n\nWith time, children learn to recognize parts of the language spoken in their environment and begin to emulate these sounds, learning their first words, and eventually to speak.\n\nSo what we have here is a brain creating random behavior (in this case with the speaking apparatus), and learning from the effects this behavior elicits in the environment which behavior leads to the desired results. Whatever happens in the brain when a desired result is achieved, is stored as the \"internal behavior of the brain\" to do to achive that result, e.g. what to say to get that ball.", "This is true.\n\nFrom Catija's answer and mainly her source in English Language Learners, we get a lot of information and thus, answers. She mentions first that one can have several first languages, or \"mother tongues\":\n\n\n Sometimes the term mother tongue or mother language is used for the language that a person learned as a child at home (usually from their parents). Children growing up in bilingual homes can, according to this definition, have more than one mother tongue or native language.\n\n\nYou learned from birth Javanese and Malay, so those are your first languages. I will not assume anything about Bahasa though since there is a lack of information on when you learned that language. So for now, let's assume that it is true. With the above definition, English would indeed be your second language.\n\nSo, you are completely correct if Bahasa is indeed a mother tongue (first language).\n\n\n\nNow though you seem to be more literate in English than in Javanese and Malay as you are able to speak fluently in English but not in the other two languages. Another Wikipedia quote:\n\n\n It is quite possible that the first language learned is no longer a speaker's dominant language. \n\n\nFirst means first so of course, fluency is not a factor though you may see that some assume that you are most fluent in your first languages. Note that people assume and expect that though that is not always the case.\n\nCatija also says in the beginning of her answer:\n\n\n Your mother tongue, also known as first language or native language, is the language you grow up speaking at home. Most people have one native language and may acquire second languages at various levels of fluency.\n \n \n A first language (also native language, mother tongue, arterial language, or L1) is the language or are the languages a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity[citation needed]. In some countries, the terms native language or mother tongue refer to the language of one's ethnic group rather than one's first language. Children brought up speaking more than one language can have more than one native language, and be bilingual.\n \n By contrast, a second language is any language that one speaks other than one's first language.\n \n\n\nThe bold is mine for emphasis.\n\n\n\nSo, with all this information, what can we deduct? That your first languages are Javanese and Malay (and maybe Bahasa) because of the first and second bold quotes:\n\n\nA first language (also native language, mother tongue, arterial language, or L1) is the language or are the languages a person has learned from birth...\nChildren brought up speaking more than one language can have more than one native language, and be bilingual.\n\n\nAnd English as your second language as seen by the comparison in the last bold quote:\n\n\nBy contrast, a second language is any language that one speaks other than one's first language.", "Spoken creoles are developed in environments where many languages are mixed (for example, in the Caribbean region, there were several major colonial languages and many African languages spoken by slaves). For deaf children learning sign languages, there is the opposite problem – they may have no input that is \"linguistic,\" but only some non-linguistic gestures or non-native sign. There are two sign languages that have been \"created\" (i.e. arisen by some means other than descent from an extant language) in recent years and have been the subject of research by language-acquisition researchers: Nicaraguan Sign Language and al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language. So I'd say that these are the closest thing to a sign language \"creole\" (although not much is known about the historical genesis of older sign languages, and it's quite possible that all of them arose spontaneously in deaf communities without influence from aural languages).\n\nFor the concept of \"pidgin,\" there are so-called home sign systems, which develop when deaf children and hearing caregivers do not have access to instruction in an established sign language. These generally lack some of the traits than linguists ascribe to natural languages (as do pidgins).\n\nIf you're interested in the families of sign languages and the phylogenetic relationships between them, you might want to check out this section of Wikipedia, which lists the currently accepted groupings.", "The prospects for a definitive answer are bleak, because the qualifications for distinct established writing system are not entirely clear. Re: consensus on correctness, if taken literally this is an impossible requirement to actually satisfy. Suppose that \"American English\" is a language with an established writing system, is different from the British English writing system (see well-known spelling differences like theater, color, the suffix -ize). There is no way to determine the consensus spelling of accommodate, reference, until. There aren't any practical but scientifically valid survey methods that would tell you what most people think is the correct spelling. Psychology tests will sample only current undergraduates in universities enrolled in courses where they are compelled to be experimental subjects, which is not a valid basis for extrapolating to the population (which anyhow first needs to be defined, since 7 year olds do not have valid opinions). Sampling from written samples likewise gives you a highly skewed sample. There are normative answers contained in pedagogical spelling materials and dictionaries, but appeal to authority is quite anti-consensus. I'm not arguing for a populist approach to spelling, I'm arguing that the issue of standards needs to be sharpened up. I would say that there is a standard for American English spelling (so, yes, I am arguing for appeal to authoritative sources), but it is not rigorously respected, to the point that \"nite\" is not generally considered a misspelling anymore. Question: do you could \"nite, brite, lite\" spelling as defining a distinct writing system, or not?\n\nWithin the sphere of American English, you would almost certainly have to recognize a number of dialect variants. Some people pronounce \"thing\" as [θæŋ], and some people pronounce \"with\" as [wɪf]. While we don't find large-scale adaptation of \"thang\" and \"wif\" in writing, a number of authors writing (partially or wholely) in those dialects do employ alternative dialect spellings. Should we recognise this as a different standard (insofar as it is reasonably standard within the context of writing those dialects)?\n\nThe desideratum that \"There should be a relevant number of native speakers that used it and traded it to their children\" seems reasonable, since probably all languages with at least a dozen speakers have some written materials created by a linguist, but there hasn't been uptake on all of those efforts. The idea that native speaker parents teach their children how to write is maybe a bit over-optimistic (I learned how to write in school, my parents didn't teach me, and actually one of my teachers was not a native speaker though she know how to read, write and teach English). If we substitute the desideratum \"is adopted by native speakers\", and stipulate that the system should be used by at least one person not professionally engaged in promulgating the writing system, then we may have a suitable filter. If you want a larger set of professionally-disinterested writers (e.g. \"at least 100 individuals\"), this would filter out very many languages, over 10% of current languages, which have too few speakers, and probably much more than that because minor languages tend to have literacy problems.\n\nIn languages whose writing systems are newly developed, especially in African languages, the phonemic system is rich and the orthography often includes many distinctions that are unattractive to speakers – symbols like ɪ ʊ ə ʃ š ŋ plus diacritics as in á à ̋a ǎ. There is an observed tendency to omit such diacritics, which would lead to distinct writing systems (the officially sanctioned system, versus the system used by people). Hence official Kikuyu distinguishes [i ĩ u ũ] and ordinary writing omits the diacritic -- does this count as two writing systems?\n\nDepending on how these issues are resolved, the ballpark would be on the order of 10,000 systems.\n\nThe reason for the up-tick relative to the number of Ethnologue-listed languages is because of the aforementioned factors. For instance, Lule Saami has different writing systems for Norway and Sweden but it's one language. Surprisingly, English is a single language (but multiple writing systems). I'm also including increases for historical changes in spelling. North Saami has had at least 4 spelling systems over about 400 years; languages spoken in the Russian sphere of influence (esp. the southern zone) have changed between Cyrillic, Latin, Arabic and other bases for writing within the past 150 years; many African languages have gone through two or three spelling systems just within 100 years. There are also quite a number of writing systems in India, for instance Punjabi which has two (Indian and Pakistani), Devanagari, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada... Each of these has a distinct script.\n\nThe statement \"different languages, if written, do usually define different writing systems (like English and Spanish)\" is a bit unclear. English does not use &lt;ñ&gt; or any accents, which Spanish does. Maybe you mean that because of those different letters, English and Spanish have different writing systems. Shona and Swahili are completely different languages, but they happen to use the same letters from the Latin alphabet, so you might say that they have the same writing system (even though there are combinations in one that aren't possible in the other: &lt;sv, tsv, bh, n'&gt; in Shona, &lt;gh, ng'&gt; in Swahili.\n\nIf you want to restrict the set of \"established writing systems\", I would suggest (1) being lax about \"sameness\" whereby \"color\" and \"colour\" don't reflect different writing systems, they reflect different spellings and (2) raise the bar on what it takes to be \"established\": government recognition might be what you're after.", "First, I’ll dispute your premise that “Esperanto isn’t spoken natively by any one”. In fact, Esperanto, being by far the most popular constructed language, does have native speakers. People with different first languages who have met through the Esperanto community have bought up children with Esperanto as their first language. In fact, I believe that there are now some second-generation speakers. (Of course, all such people will also speak at least one other language, but still, native speakers of Esperanto do exist.)\n\n\n\nNow on to answering the question.\n\nThere are, of course, many reasons why one might choose to learn Esperanto, just as there are many reasons for learning any other language, but most are off topic for this site. I imagine you’re asking about learning Esperanto as a stepping-stone to learning another language. Some experts do indeed recommend this.\n\nThe theory is that Esperanto, being a constructed regular language, is fairly easy to learn, and that learning a language makes it easier for you to learn another.\n\nThe first part of that is undeniably true: Esperanto is easy to learn (at least, compared to most other languages). The second does have some supporting evidence, but it is tentative. The idea of learning Esperanto first has been around for a while, but what probably jumped it into the public consciousness was Tim Morley’s talk at TEDxGranta, who described using Esperanto in British primary schools.\n\nAnd it worked.\n\nBut there are some considerations which may not apply to an adult learner.\n\n\nOne of the problems was a lack of teachers qualified to teach French directly. It’s easier to train teachers to teach Esperanto. This probably won’t apply in your case.\nThis was, specifically, the first foreign language learned by these children. If you’ve already learned a second language and are now tackling a third, most of the considerations won’t apply.\nLearning in a classroom situation, having your peers fairly fluent is an aid to learning and confidence. Therefore, a language which is quick and easy to learn will build confidence.\nYou can jump to the “creative” stuff quicker, which builds confidence, interest, and joy. Again, this probably applies more to children.", "Often we are hearing that such-and-such spelling, phraseology, etc is incorrect. Person X made a grammar error, pronunciation error, orthography error, styling error, other sorts of language error.\n\n\nYes, indeed! Linguists do spend a lot of time figuring out what things are correct and what things are incorrect. But how exactly do we figure that out? There are two fundamental approaches.\n\n\n Superficially, it would seem to me that linguists are there to study a language and not to create it. The language was created a long time ago by our forefathers; and is constantly being re-created and modified by those who speak it.\n\n\nThis is called the descriptivist view: that linguists study what already exists, but don't (and shouldn't, and usually can't) change it in the process. I'd say probably about 90% of modern linguists fall into this camp. (I, personally, do.)\n\nDescriptivists say that something is \"correct\" (more often grammatical) if and only if a consensus of competent native speakers accepts it as grammatical. In other words, language is defined by the consensus of the speakers of that language, rather than by any central authority.\n\nThe opposite is called the prescriptivist view: that linguists can change the territory to make their maps prettier. There are many, many prescriptivists out there in the world—think of the people who call themselves \"grammar nazis\", or the people who claim using \"literally\" as an intensifier is literally like 1984, or the people making a fuss about singular \"they\". But most of them aren't actually linguists (in the sense of scientifically researching and studying language).\n\n\n …the linguists may declare such use of the language incorrect but this will only lead to the typical map vs territory issue. Worst case, the linguists are ignored; best case, the language diverges into its \"as the linguists see fit\" variation, spoken by very few people, and its \"as people actually speak\" variation. Typically, however, the linguists will have to back off eventually.\n\n\nIndeed; historically, this is what usually happens to prescriptivists.\n\nThere are a few very notable counterexamples: look into \"language planning\", for example, where linguists promote prescriptive rules in order to preserve or revive an endangered language (that would otherwise get amalgamated and absorbed by a different language). Modern Hebrew, for example, wouldn't exist if not for language planners inventing hundreds of new words and dozens of new constructions to bring it back from the grave. But once the language can stand on its own again, as you put it, \"the linguists will have to back off eventually\"—Modern Hebrew now has a thriving speech community that has more influence than any central authority.\n\n\n\nP.S.\n\n\n (although it's kind of interesting to watch how non-native English speakers mangle English - do we already observe the birth of a yet another English variation - Broken English - natively spoken by non-native speakers?)\n\n\nUsually, one of three things happens.\n\n\nThe learners pick up \"standard\" English and become part of the surrounding English-speaking community.\nThe learners pick up \"standard\" English but fuse it with influences from their native language, creating a new dialect or a new speech community (e.g. Indian English, the version of English widely-spoken in India, which has diverged quite heavily from British and American English).\nThe learners combine broken English with a broken version of their native language, creating a rudimentary \"pidgin\" in order to communicate with English-speakers. If children then grow up speaking this pidgin, they tend to smooth down the rough edges, fill out any places where the grammar is lacking, and turn it into a fully-fledged language called a \"creole\".\n\n\nThe first of these is the most common, but the last is the most linguistically interesting, and tends to be heavily studied whenever it happens.", "When I first started teaching in Spanish I wrote my lectures out in full before every class, something I would never do in English (my native language). This required consulting textbooks written in Spanish and speaking to other teachers to find out what is standard usage and mathematical terminology. Such consultation is essential. Since mathematical terminology mostly comes from English, French, and German there sometimes are not native Spanish expressiosn for technical terms. Dictionaries rarely are useful for finding out what is correct mathematical usage. Much mathematical terminology in Spanish originates in French usage rather than English usage. \n\nWhen actually giving class, it is important to write everything that one says on the board. If students struggle with one's accent, at least they can read what one writes. For this it is of course important that what one writes be more or less correct grammatically and orthographically. For this one sometimes has to write lectures in far more detail than one would in one's native language.\n\nSomething I have encountered frequently is that theorems are known by different names in different cultures. The (some) theorem expressing the dimension of the space of solutions of a system of linear equations in terms of its rank is known as the Rouché-Frobenius theorem in Spain. It is called differently in other countries (in the US it doesn't usually get given a name). One needs to learn these local customary names and terminology. It helps for communicating with students. Otherwise what happens is that students know some theorem as Bolzano's theorem and don't realize the professor is talking about Bolzano's theorem because he calls it something else.\n\nIf one teaches at the university level, for example calculus or linear algebra, one needs to familiarize oneself with what is taught at the high school level. Terminology used in primary education is often peculiar, highly regional, and quite different from \"professional\" use. For example, in Spain what most (?) mathematicians would call \"convex\" is called \"concave up\" in high school, where students are taught to speak of \"concave up\" and \"concave down\". Teaching without awareness of such issues one can generate a lot of confusion.\n\nI found that explaining math in a second language obliged me to use a simpler, more colloquial language than I would use in my native language. My experience was that this often was positive from the pedagogical point of view. For example, I found myself explaining Cavalieri's principle in terms of presliced loaves of bread. It's a helpful metaphor I continue to use now.\n\nWhen giving exams, or any graded exercise, it is absolutely essential to have a mathematically competent native speaker proofread them carefully. I once (unknowingly) wrote a problem whose meaning changed materially depending on whether como/cómo had or lacked an accent mark.\n\nFinally, the difficulty of teaching in a second language will not last long. There is probably no better way to improve at speaking and writing a language than by giving classes in that language.", "The idea that you should teach a language by \"building up\" from the alphabet to sentences is—to put it politely—strange. It is strange for two reasons:\n\n\nIt does not match the language learning process of children learning their native language.\nIt is not motivating for a child to learn in this way. \n\n\nWhat I recommend instead is a more direct method where you teach meaningful statements from the start. A good example is James Asher's Total Physical Response (TPR). (This would be an example of a comprehension approach. Comprehension-based approaches can be very effective in the early phase of language learning, though not necessarily in the long run, as I have discussed elsewhere.)\n\nThe concepts of words, parts of speech, phrases and sentences can be added at a later stage, after laying a foundation of meaningful oral communication. (It is not necessary to teach those concepts before you start teaching reading and writing. Reading and writing don't need to be taught from the start.)", "Maybe, maybe not.\n\nIt sounds like you're familiar with the computer science definition of a \"language\" as a set of strings (where a \"string\" is an ordered sequence of characters, and a \"character\" is an element of an arbitrary but pre-defined set called the \"alphabet\"). But in linguistics, it's never quite that clear-cut.\n\nFor example, consider the sentence \"I ain't got nothing\". Would you consider this sentence part of the English language, or not? Many native speakers would say yes, but many other native speakers would say no. There are dialects of English where this sentence would be immediately accepted as grammatical, and other dialects where it would be immediately rejected.\n\nSort of like \"word\", \"language\" is one of those terms that comes up all the time in linguistics, even though it doesn't have any widely-accepted rigorous definition. The whole idea of discrete \"languages\" breaks down the moment you look at dialect continua—compare the languages spoken all across Italy and you won't be able to draw hard lines anywhere. But we still use it anyway, just because it's an extremely useful model in most circumstances.\n\nIn this case, no native English speaker I know would produce that sentence. However, every native English speaker I know would understand the meaning perfectly. Does that make it a part of the English language? Well, that's up to you and the definitions you decide to use.\n\nP.S. The main error in your sentence is syntactic, not morphological. For a pure morphology error, try something like *\"Alex sleep\" (instead of \"Alex sleeps\").", "Were you (born and) raised in a society of that language throughout your early childhood at least? If yes, yes; if no, no.\nThe word 'native' can only mean roughly &quot;born in that&quot;, it does not mean 'super advanced' or 'indigenous' or 'endogenous' — to give it any other literal meaning is equivalent to saying 'Cantonese-speaker' can denote anything else than 'a person who speaks Cantonese'. In online forms there is often only one language that can be set as 'native', since most people grow up in one language only — unless you were raised in Switzerland —, anything else is labeled proficient/fluent/native-level. OBS: &quot;native-level&quot;, not &quot;native&quot;.\nIf one of your parents taught you the language while you were growing up, you possibly do not have the command an educated native would have, so you should use heritage-language, raised-in, or whatever term is used in your country or option is allowed to you. If there is no such option and there only lies 'native' or 'proficient/advanced/basic/etc', I would be better safe than sorry and just say 'native-level' or 'very advanced' or any equivalent; if you are dead confident in your skills as a speaker and are allowed to choose more than one language as your 'native' one, go for it, but it is not going to save you trouble or unneeded social situations that demand explanation.\nOn the condition that you provided &quot;middle school level of reading/writing ability&quot;, there are several social &quot;what-ifs&quot; for that. An intelligent middle schooler of the economic elite would probably be more literate than a since-ever homeless man in his 20's, though they are both native speakers of their own language. If you are educated, an adult, and have the fluency in your &quot;native&quot; language equivalent to that of the average native middle schooler, that will sound absolutely bizarre to the other end.", "I think this extract from the Mixed language's wikipedia article will help you:\n\nDifferent from a pidgin: \n\n\n A mixed language differs from a pidgin in that the speakers developing the language are fluent, even native, speakers of both languages, whereas a pidgin develops when groups of people with little knowledge of each other's languages come into contact and have need of a basic communication system, as for trade, but do not have enough contact to learn each other's language.\n\n\nDifferent from a creole: \n\n\n In a mixed language, both source languages are clearly identifiable. This differs from a creole language, which generally has one identifiable parent, in addition to diverse input which cannot be traced to any particular language. While creoles tend to have drastically simplified morphologies, mixed languages often retain the inflectional complexities of both parent languages.", "Because children in that age range are learning language skills rapidly, and primarily by listening to what adults say. \n\nIf they hear a new word, they will almost certainly try to use that word, even if they do not understand what the word means (which is frequently the case). It is how they learn. \n\nObviously you aren't offended by profanity, but believe it or not, many people are. It is, after all, intended to be... well... profane.\n\nUsing profanity in school can cause problems for both children and their parents. Once they start using profanity, it becomes difficult to get them to stop, as most attempts only teach the child that there is something \"special\" about those words, and that those words are more likely to get some sort of response, whether positive or negative.", "There are two important things about Terry Waltz that you need to know:\n\n\nshe teaches Chinese to native speakers of English, so not everything she says about learning Chinese automatically applies to languages closer to English (or closer the native language of pupils or students), and\nshe uses TPRS / Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling, which focuses much more heavily on comprehensible input than many other teaching methods.\n\n\nI could not find a statement by Terry Waltz mentioning 50 exposures, but I found the following comment by her on a blog post (14.05.2010):\n\n\n In classroom teaching using comprehensible input, we usually aim for 70-80 exposures in novel contexts during the first day of presentation, then regular \"refreshers\" when the item is presented in the course of input over future lessons. 10-20 isn't nearly enough, especially if the language is not highly similar to English. For a cognate, maybe. For anything else, not really.\n\n\nSo she admits that the linguistic distance between the native language and the target language impacts the number of required exposures, though it is not clear how much. The influence of the teaching method is not mentioned at all.\n\nFor a demonstration of teaching Chinese using TPRS, see the YouTube video TPRS DEMO: Day 1 Mandarin, Terry Waltz (18 minutes, 04.03.2015; notes that appear on the video explain what she is currently doing and why).\n\nIn an earlier response to a somewhat related question, I had found that 8 to 10 revisions were required. Fooziyeh Rasouli and Khadijeh Jafari wrote in their paper A Deeper Understanding of L2 Vocabulary Learning and Teaching: A Review Study (International Journal of Language and Linguistics, January 2016),\n\n\n Webb (2007) explains that for each repetition of a word, at least one piece of word knowledge is acquired; therefore, a typical learner should meet a word about 8 to 10 times to obtain full word knowledge. What is worth mentioning here is the intervals between the repetitions. Nation (2001) refers to the conducted studies on memory and reports that \"most forgetting takes place immediately after first encounter with new information. That is, the older the piece of knowledge, the more slowly it will be forgotten. This suggests that the first several encounters should be close together, with later encounters spaced farther apart\" (p.24).\n\n\n\"8 to 10 times\" is a number of exposures that, according to Terry Waltz, \"isn't nearly enough\", but I think the teaching method and, consequently, what exactly constitutes \"exposure\" make a crucial difference here.", "I see three separate issues: 1) Your child's Monday morning sadness, 2) his shyness at school, and 3) his outbursts in public.\n\n1. Monday morning sadness. The only way to really solve this one is to have a stay-at-home parent. It shouldn't come as a surprise children this age prefer a parent at home pretty much always. Since this is probably not financially feasible, just keep doing what your doing, and it will get better as time goes on. If you can afford a single income, you might consider exercising that option for the well being of your child.\n\n2. Shyness at daycare. Boys usually mature more slowly than girls, both with verbal and social skills. Combine that with the jarring difference in language from one environment into another, and he's probably completely confused. This should get better, but my experience with boys in bilingual cultures is it takes until about 4 to get it all sorted out. Also, the other children might be quite a bit bigger than him. It might be scary.\n\n3. His social behavior. Welcome to parenting a two year old. Seems perfectly \"normal\" to me. My 9 and 7 year olds are angels ... usually. But at two, sometimes I just had to pick them up and leave from anywhere we were.", "Korean has formal and informal embedded in the grammar, much like most European languages with a T-V distinction but with more levels. Grammatically, there are quite a few \"speech levels\", from archaic Joseon-dynasty / Biblical [하소서체] to casual between friends or to children [해체]. However, I think most beginner Korean courses teach just two: 해요체 and 해체, with some 합쇼체 added later, as these three are ones you will come across daily in modern South Korea.\n\nNative Koreans split the system into 존댓말 for \"formal\" vs 반말 \"informal\", which in modern South Korean society grammatically really means a mix of 합쇼체 and 해요체 for the first, and 해체 with a little bit of 해라체 for the second. \n\nAlso, I consider it more useful (especially from a pedagogical level) to break down Korean's system into three dimensions: formality, politeness, and honorificity. It is possible to be informal and yet polite [해요체], or formal and non-polite [해라체]. \n\nHow the relationship of 존댓말 to 반말 is established is really important. In general, professional environments would mandate 존댓말 all the time, even with people you know in a different context. In many professional contexts, including (famously) men in the military, even 해요체 is disallowed (합쇼체 is required in all formal contexts); also most news broadcasts and official announcements.\n\nIn most daily conversations with people you know, 해요체 is most common, and as the younger one in the relationship you would (in general) not be at liberty to change your speech level; that would be the right of the older one. Hence why most Korean speakers ask for the age when meeting someone for the first time. \n\nIn the event that the older one in the relationship wants to switch from 존댓말 to 반말, the older one would initialise, but it can be a clear declaration, or they can go straight into using it, or they can mix between 해요체 and 해체 for a bit. The younger one may not necessarily reciprocate with 해체 back. That's quite common in fact. E.g. the first relationship i.e. between parents and children, the speech levels would be 해체 from parents to children and 해요체 from children to parents, although that is changing somewhat in modern society.\n\nIt is possible for the younger to encourage the older one to \"lower their speech\" [e.g. by saying 말 놓으세요 or 말 편하게 하세요], but note that younger will often (/ should) still stick to 존댓말. This is particularly common within structured but informal environments, e.g. to a 선배 at university or within the workplace. \n\nIf you are both the same (Korean) age, there is already a basis for using 반말, and some people will go for informal straight away, but not in all cases. \n\nHence, apart from clear cases of 존댓말, there is a bit of flexibility in managing the transition from 존댓말 to 반말. It's a big part of K-drama plots: the point at which the relationship goes to 반말, whether it's one-sided or mutual 반말 etc.\n\nI've not mentioned the drop from honorific to non-honorific within 존댓말 very much, but that's also a subtly managed transition, and also as indicative of how someone feels about the referred-to person.", "In short: No, Yiddish is not a creole.\n\nA creole is a stable language developed from the mixing of parent languages. A creole develops if (and, AFAIK, only if) its speakers were children who grew up speaking what used to be a pidgin as their first language.\n\nA pidgin is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between groups that do not have a language in common. A pidgin is not the native speech of any entire community but is an acquired language.\n\nPidgins develop rather haphazardly out of necessity when multiple language groups, for whatever reason, need to communicate with each other on a very regular basis. Bits of vocabulary from each language are put into a melting pot, so to speak, and an ad-hoc rudimentary grammar develops. People are trying very hard to make themselves understood, and the result of that generally resembles a sort of tarzan-speak.\n\nPidgin languages are not stable and continues to develop in a rather impromptu manner. There is not necessarily any widely agreed upen grammar and will vary widely from speaker to speaker. Certain conventions will inevitably arrive, that is, the features of the pidgin that are used enough will become standard.\n\nWikipedia lists some notable characteristcs of pidgins:\n\n\n \n Uncomplicated clausal structure (e.g., no embedded clauses, etc.)\n Reduction or elimination of syllable codas\n Reduction of consonant clusters or breaking them with epenthesis\n Basic vowels, such as [a, e, i, o, u]\n No tones, such as those found in West African and Asian languages\n Use of separate words to indicate tense, usually preceding the verb\n Use of reduplication to represent plurals, superlatives, and other\n parts of speech that represent the concept being increased\n A lack of morphophonemic variation\n \n\n\nNote that a creole is linguistically more developed than a pidgin. The language is mostly stable. Unlike pidgins, which along with moribund languages are notable for their simplified characteristics, there are no grammatical features that are unique to creoles.\n\nNow, finally, to your question: Yiddish was not a language that developed from two language groups trying to communicate with each other. It is a High German language that was (and, to a lesser extent, still is) spoken by Ashkenazic communities in central Europe. Yiddish was never a rudimentary mixture of two languages, it was just German that borrowed a few features of Aramaic and Hebrew.\n\nAnd, no, English was not a creole during the Norman conquest. English was still English, it was, for the most part grammatically the same as it was before. English just borrowed a large amount of vocabulary from French.", "Historically, the direct method is a language teaching method (rather than a learning method) developed by Maximilian Berlitz at the end of the 19th century. Berlitz called it the \"Berlitz Method\", but it is otherwise known as the direct method. \n\nThe direct method was based on the belief that total immersion would speed up the language learning process. It gave listening and speaking a higher priority than reading and writing (similar to a child's acquisition of their native language). Grammar was taught in an inductive manner and focused on the forms that are most common in the spoken language. \n\nClasses had few students; the intensity and the small class size made the direct method unsuitable for public schools, who went back to the grammar translation method (GTM). (See Taber's \"A Brief History of ESL Instruction\".) According to Mehmet Demirezen, the popularity of the direct method had declined by the 1920s due to criticism from the Reform Movement. \n\nAdvantages of the direct method:\n\n\nThe learner receives more input in the target language than when the language is instructed in their native language.\nThe learner creates direct associations between words in the foreign language and concepts in their mind, actions, situations, etc., instead of indirect connections via words in their native language. (This can be important when words in the target language are difficult to map to words in the native language.)\nBecause of the above, the learner is encouraged much earlier to think in the target language (which may reduce interference from the native language, although no language teaching method prevents it entirely).\nClasses have few students, so the intensity of the learning process can be increased. \n\n\nDisadvantages of the direct method: \n\n\nActivities are much more teacher-guided than in certain other methods that allow, e.g., peer teaching/peer learning. (See Naim: \"Direct Method vs Communicative Language Teaching\".).\nThere is no emphasis on authentic materials. (Cf. Naim.)\nSome learners may not like the delay in learning to read and write, e.g. if they need to learn the language for professional reasons. \nThe direct method requires a high level of language competence in teachers, since they are not supposed to compensate lower language skills by relying on their native language. \nThe small class size made the direct method unsuitable for public education.\nAt the beginning, the learner may feel overwhelmed by the new language, and certain emotional states (anxiousness, frustration, anger, ...) can have a negative effect on learning. The direct method did not deal with these psychological aspects (cf. Naim), unlike some other methods such as Suggestopedia.\nSome concepts are difficult to explain without recourse to the learner's native language. (However, if an occasional translations is allowed, this need not be a disadvantage of the direct method.)\nWhen there is a big distance between the learner's native language and the target language, certain aspects are difficult to explain without using the learner's native language. This is especially the case for grammar and certain communicative and cultural subtleties. At the early stages, the learner simply lacks the vocabulary to understand these aspects when they are explained in the foreign language. \n\n\nFinally, I would like to quote from Bob Adamson's chapter \"Fashions in Language Teaching Methodology\" (in: Davies, Alan; Elders, Catherine, eds.: The Handbook of Applied Linguistics. Blackwell Publishing, 2004.) Adamson quotes another researcher (Nunan), who says that there is \"little evidence that methods are realised at the level of classroom action in the ways intended by their creators\". Adamson adds: \"The complexity of classroom realities virtually renders invalid any “one-size-fitsall” approach to method selection.\"\n\n(Note: I did not rely on Wikipedia for the list of advantages and disadvantages.)", "One good reason for learning Esperanto as one's first foreign language is its propaedeutic value, i.e. the value of learning (or teaching) it before learning (or teaching) other foreign languages. There has been some research on this topic. Some of it is discussed in What research has been done on the effects of learning Esperanto on acquiring other languages? on Linguistics SE. And Wikipedia has an entire article on the propaedeutic value of Esperanto that summarizes some research findings.\n\nFor example, in the 1990s, there was a project in Australia that tried to establish whether Esperanto would be a good language to learn as a first foreign language at primary school (see the EKPAROLI Project Report 1994 - 1997). These findings agree nicely with Tim Morley's experience (see the TEDx talk by Tim Morley). \n\nHowever, I am not aware of studies on the propaedeutic value for people who already know a foreign language or for adults (since adults have, on average, more metacognitive skills than children, and such skills can speed up language learning).", "There is plenty of research on this topic. The Use of Music for Learning Languages: A Review (Stansell) asserts that (emphasis mine):\n\n\n The researchers in this literature review show conclusively that music and language should\n be studied together. Music‟s success is due, in part, to primal human abilities. Music codes\n words with heavy emotional and contextual flags, evoking a realistic, meaningful, and cogent\n environment, and enabling students to have positive attitudes, self-perceptions, and cultural\n appreciation so they can actively process new stimuli and infer the rules of language. The\n universal element of music can make the artificial classroom environment into a “real”\n experience and make new information meaningful, bringing interest and order to a classroom. \n \n ...\n \n One area to focus upon would be the use of music for instruction in grammar. Whereas it\n takes little preparation to utilize songs for active class involvement, phrase and vocabulary\n acquisition, cultural appreciation, and pronunciation, grammar is seldom considered an issue that\n music can benefit. \n \n ...\n \n This author has developed a new curriculum for teaching the Czech language, which has\n students learning simple sentences with books of family pictures, singing five-part canons with\n grammar concepts embedded in them, chanting the pronoun endings of prepositional phrases,rhythmically moving, listening to different instruments, listening and reading, and having\n dialogue with native speakers. This system, the Phrase-Exemplar-based Multisensory Method\n (PEBMSM) has been used by language trainers, but is primarily intended to be a demonstration\n of the possible uses of music in a language learning context. \n\n\nWhy Use Music in English Language Learning? A Survey of the\nLiterature (Engh) provides that (emphasis mine):\n\n\n The use of rhythm and rhyme to assist auditory recall has also been studied, and the multimodal combination of\n rhythm, melody and rhyme along with linguistic prosody appears to lead to greater retention (Graham, 1992;\n Palmer &amp; Kelly, 1992). \n \n ...\n \n Murphey (1989) provides potential evidence regarding why music effectively assists in lexical and phrasal recall\n in noting the resemblance of songs to conversational discourse and suggests they are linguistically processed in a\n similar manner. \n \n Music in the language classroom may also be utilized with\n an explicit vocabulary and grammar focus (Richards, 1969; Saricoban &amp; Metin, 2000) and used to reinforce\n either grammar or pronunciation points (Allen &amp; Vallette, 1977). Pronunciation and phonology are a natural use\n of songs in the aid of second language acquisition (Schön et al, 2008), and Leith (1979) states:\n \n …there is probably not a better nor quicker way to teach phonetics than with songs. Phonetics instruction is one\n good use to which songs can be put even in beginning classes (540).\n The repetitive nature of songs makes them effective use for pronunciation drills (Bartle, 1962; Techmeier, 1969;\n Shaw, 1970) and lastly, it is argued that songs contextually introduce supra-segmental features (Lems, 2001;\n Wong and Perrachione, 2006), which aids in the learning of patterns for word identification.\n \n Overall, the results are clear in suggesting use of music and song in the language-learning classroom is both\n supported theoretically by practicing teachers and grounded in the empirical literature as a benefit to increase\n linguistic, sociocultural and communicative competencies. From an educational standpoint, music and language\n not only can, but should be studied together.", "I have learned 2 languages that use gender.\nFirst, let me say that native speakers are remarkably patient to non-native speakers for making gender errors. So relax, they will not view you in a bad light for doing so. In fact, they will be pleased that you are making the effort to learn their language.\nFor my first language, when inflecting the word for masculine/feminine, I created word pictures with either my father or my mother in the picture. This helped cement the proper gender to the inflection until it became natural.\nWith the 2nd language, I did the same thing but with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Meryl Streep instead of my parents. This helped differentiate the genders in the 2nd language from the first language.\nI hope this helps.", "TL;DR: Research shows that drinking with parents was associated with more episodes of drunkenness for their children and drinking behavior of female children were more influenced by their mother’s parenting style than males.\n\n\n Conclusion: Parenting style around alcohol use which included parental bond and specific parental rules regarding alcohol, had a strong influence on adolescent drinking behavior that extended into young adulthood (to 20 years from the data available). Whereas the previous review recommended strict rules, the more recent evidence is more nuanced and suggests that rules alongside a strong, caring parental bond is protective against alcohol use. Both a\n permissive attitude towards alcohol that may include drinking at home and an\n overprotective parenting style have been found to be associated with higher levels of alcohol use. A strong maternal bond, particularly for females offspring, may be protective against heavy alcohol drinking. Source: Parental Influence on Alcohol Use in Adolescents and Young Adults\n\n\nAlso research evidence from a review of 22 studies shows that drinking with parents (DWP) might increase the risk for progression toward unsupervised drinking for their children.\n\n\n There is strong evidence to support the general notion that the easier alcohol is to obtain, the more adolescents will drink. The consensus from the literature is that when parents provide alcohol to their children and drink with them, they increase their child’s risk of greater and more risky alcohol use behaviors over time. At this point, there is no research on how parental provision might contribute to the development of AUD. Source: Providing Alcohol for Underage Youth: What Messages Should We Be Sending Parents?\n \n First, allowing children to drink underage, even when supervised by\n the parent, is always associated with a greater likelihood of drinking during adolescence over time. Parents should understand this connection and avoid allowing their children to drink. Source: Providing Alcohol for Underage Youth: What Messages Should We Be Sending Parents?\n \n The researchers say there is little research to support the notion that it is possible to “teach” children to drink alcohol responsibly. They write their review “suggests that by allowing alcohol use at a young age, parents might increase the risk for progression toward unsupervised drinking more rapidly than it would otherwise have been.” Allowing teens to drink may instill a sense of comfort in alcohol use, which could increase their tendency to drink, with or without their parents present. Source: Parents Teaching Teens “Responsible Drinking” is a Myth: Study", "What would be the guiding principles for figuring this out based on Buddhist principles and Buddha's advice for married couples and the general sentiment of the teachings historically attributed to the Buddha.\n\nAs others already mentioned, the teaching is mostly for monastics with some small portion just giving generic advice to the lays. However, one can always use logic and common sense to come up with the best solution for everyone. A common mistake is the automatic assumption about the benefit of sacrificing oneself for the sake of the children, while in reality, there're instances where it's even more harmful to them. Imagine staying with your spouse, but engaging in constant back and forth arguments using harsh, abusive language, Or, on the other extreme, remain completely silent and let the spouse spewing all the nasty words all day long. Both of those stay-together scenarios would actually do more harm to the children than good. So, use one's own intelligence and common sense to evaluate the situation. While it'd obviously be best for parents to try to work things out and stay together, but if that means it'll create a living hell for both parties, and/or it doesn't actually benefit children, or even does more harm to them, then one might have to consider the idea to go one's own separate way, for the sake of everyone involved.", "Diana Baumrind, a psychologist known for her work on parenting research, identified different categories of parenting styles.\nThe restrictive approach you describe sounds very much like her &quot;authoritarian&quot; style of parenting. From the wikipedia article (note that I find the article to be rather biased in tone, and it cites a number of claims based upon speculative correlation, so I am only including specific edited clips):\n\nAuthoritarian parenting, also called strict parenting, is characterized by high expectations of conformity and compliance to parental rules and directions, while allowing little open dialogue between parent and child. Authoritarian parenting is a restrictive, punitive parenting style in which parents make their children to follow their directions and to respect their work and effort. ...\n...Children resulting from this type of parenting may have less social competence because the parent generally tells the child what to do instead of allowing the child to choose by him or herself.\n\nThe other extreme, which you describe as granting freedom to the child, sounds like Baumrind's &quot;Indulgent parenting&quot; style:\n\nIndulgent parenting, also called permissive, nondirective or lenient, is characterized as having few behavioral expectations for the child. &quot;Indulgent parenting is a style of parenting in which parents are very involved with their children but place few demands or controls on them.&quot; Parents are nurturing and accepting, and are very responsive to the child's needs and wishes.\n...in the better cases they are emotionally secure, independent and are willing to learn and accept defeat. They mature quickly and are able to live life without the help of someone else.\n\nThere is, however, a middle ground between the two extremes. Baumrind referred to this as &quot;Authoritative parenting&quot; (emphasis mine):\n\nAuthoritative parenting, also called 'assertive democratic' or 'balanced' parenting, is characterized by a child-centered approach that holds high expectations of maturity. Authoritative parents can understand how their children are feeling and teach them how to regulate feelings. They often help their children to find appropriate outlets to solve problems. Authoritative parents encourage children to be independent but still places controls and limits on their actions. Extensive verbal give-and-take is not refused, and parents try to be warm and nurturant toward the child. Authoritative parents are not usually as controlling as authoritarian parents, allowing the child to explore more freely, thus having them make their own decisions based upon their own reasoning. Often, authoritative parents produce children who are more independent and self-reliant. An authoritative parenting style mainly results when there is high parental responsiveness and high parental demands.\nAuthoritative parents will set clear standards for their children, monitor the limits that they set, and also allow children to develop autonomy. They also expect mature, independent, and age-appropriate behavior of children. Punishments for misbehavior are measured and consistent, not arbitrary or violent. Authoritative parents set limits and demand maturity, but when punishing a child, the parent will explain his or her motive for their punishment. They are attentive to their children’s needs and concerns, and will typically forgive and teach instead of punishing if a child falls short. This is supposed to result in children having a higher self esteem and independence because of the give-take nature of the authoritative parenting style.", "One of the most effective techniques developed in teaching syllables to Russian children is Zaitsev's tables. The same approach was successfully used in Ukrainian and Kazakh languages. I assume it can be adapted to Finnish.\n\nNikolay Zaitsev spent his life teaching Russian to foreign students. His approach was to print a large poster containing all possible combinations of 2-letter syllables possible in Russian language. All syllables that begin with the same consonant are ordered in a column. Columns for different consonants are ordered in a row. For practical reasons instead of a single row of 20 consonants, it's printed as 2 row with 10 consonants each. \n\nA \"lesson\" for a 3-4 year old child is 5-10 minutes long. A child is asked to read syllables either vertically (all combinations for the same consonants), or horizontally (all syllables ending with the same vowel. A teacher/parent is typically picking syllables asking a child to read them. The lesson can be repeated daily.\n\nHere is an example of how Zaitsev's table for Russian language looks like:", "In Japan, being a \"native speaker\" is required to obtain Instructor status, which is necessary to teach foreign languages in elementary, junior high and high schools. Technically, what is required is that you have received at least 12 years of education entirely in the language you want to teach (and not just language classes).\n\nNo such requirement exists for teaching at any other place (yes, including universities). Of course, this is only the requirements set by immigration, employers may and do set additional requirements to hire you. The only non-native English speaker I know who is teaching English in Japan has several English teaching certifications, and is teaching at a preschool, which is probably not for everyone.\n\nThere are many websites such as GaijinPot where job ads aimed at foreigners are listed, with most of them unsurprisingly being for English teaching, so you can have a look to see what employers normally demand.", "I think I found a solution, but before a little\nPremise\nload_theme_textdomain() and load_child_theme_textdomain() are basically equal, the only difference is the default path they use:\n\nthey get the current language (using get_locale()) and add the relative .mo file to the path passed as argument;\nthen they call load_textdomain() passing as argument both the textdomain and the resulting path to the .mo file.\n\nThen load_textdomain loads the .mo file into the global textdomain variable, but as we can read from the source:\n\nIf the domain already exists, the translations will be merged.\nIf both sets have the same string, the translation from the original value will be taken.\n\nSo, in order to override/replace just the strings of the theme parent we want, we need to load a custom .mo file for the parent textdomain, containing just those strings translated, before the parent theme load its .mo file.\n\nSolution\nIn the end, I simply created a folder with the name of the parent theme (just for convenience) into the child theme languages folder, and put inside it my custom .mo files for the parent textdomain (one for language, in the xx_XX.mo form, where xx_XX is the language code).\nAnd then I added a line in my child theme functions.php file during the after_setup_theme action, near the one that loads the .mo file for my child theme textdomain:\nadd_action( 'after_setup_theme', function () {\n // load custom translation file for the parent theme\n load_theme_textdomain( 'parent-textdomain', get_stylesheet_directory() . '/languages/parent-theme' );\n // load translation file for the child theme\n load_child_theme_textdomain( 'my-child-theme', get_stylesheet_directory() . '/languages' );\n} );\n\nBecause the functions.php file of the child theme is loaded before the parent's one, this set of strings will have precedence over the parent theme translation (or I could've just set the priority using the third parameter of the add_action function).\n\nNote: I could have use load_child_theme_textdomain instead of load_theme_textdomain, as said in the premise it would've been the same.", "As I suspected, this is indeed a case of suppletion, a term defined by A Glossary of Historical Linguistics as\n\n\n The use of two or more originally unconnected\n forms (roots, stems) in the inflection of a single lexical\n item, for example, go&#47;went, where originally went was\n not part of the tenses of ‘to go’ but rather was the past\n tense of wend, which was taken over as the past of ‘to\n go’ and incorporated into its inflectional paradigm.\n\n\nExamining your examples:\n\n\nPortuguese metade is cognate to meio, from Latin medius, ultimately from PIE *medʰyo- (‘between’). Analogously for other Romance languages.\nGerman Hälfte comes from Proto-Germanic *halbaz, which is connected with the Indo-European root *(s)kel- ('to split'). Analogously for other Germanic languages.\nScottish leth comes from Old Irish leth, (‘side’). Analogously for other Goidelic languages.\nHebrew חצי is derived from the root חצה ('to divide').\nHungarian fél comes from Proto-Uralic pälä ('side'). Analogously for other Uralic languages.\n\n\nAccorging to Fisiak, this is the same process that caused the irregularity one &rarr; first, two &rarr; second in several languages. Since the word for half (as the words for first, second and third) is much more frequently used than the words for other fractions, it tends to maintain its irregularity over time. Another source of this irregularity is that children do not learn to count as one &rarr; first, two &rarr; second, etc. Instead, they learn the ordinal and cardinal sequences separately. This is probably what happens to the fraction numbers as well, which constitutes another barrier to regularization.", "I found this nifty paper created by the International Journal of Modern Language Teaching and Learning (the paper though, includes internal factors).\n\nLet us start with a simple definition of external factors and the abstract view of this paper:\n\n\n They are factors that come from outside the individual. Based on Browns′ definition (2007), external factors can be\n different for each individual, but their common attribute is that they are based solely on the circumstances outside of\n the control and influence of the learner. \n\n\n\n\n\n Internal and external factors are generally referred to the elements that exist inside and outside every individual.\n Internal factors are dealt with those elements every individual brings with himself to the learning context and\n these components are influenced by other factors which persist in the environment that a learner lives. Not only\n environment affects the process of acquisition, but also the second/ foreign language itself brings some other\n factors into this complex process of learning. This paper aims to mention some of the factors which are under\n categorization of the internal/external in second language acquisition (SLA). \n\n\nMotivation is quite often seen in the paper. This is well-summarized in the following table:\n\n\n\nAs you can see, external \"forces\" (for a lack of a better term) cause the learner to strive to learn the language. But isn't motivation an internal factor? Well, in this case, the table shows external factors that motivate the learner to learn rather than forms of motivation itself. These factors simply drive motivation. Let us take the definition of an internal factor:\n\n\n They are factors which come from inside the individual. According to Brown (2007), these factors are specified by\n the individual students like motivation, attitude, personal practice and study habits. Each of these factors is an\n individual element of learners′ ability to acquire a foreign language but each component also interacts with another. \n\n\nSo if you're still confused, think of this: external factors like the teacher or that cute girl who is a native speaker of a romance language (the latter is extreme but still external) act to drive with internal factors to gain results. Motivation is driven with and by external factors (i.e the pressure of impressing a girl [external] pushes one to learn faster [external factor fuels motivation, an internal factor]). In other words, they can be sources of motivation.\n\nWith that cleared, let's move on. A lot of these external factors drive extrinsic motivation:\n\n\n It is the desire to perform and succeed for the sack\n of accomplishing a specific result; it is that which drives from the influence of some kind of external outcomes\n behind self-wishes like; grades, rewards, and teachers‘ support. Learners see that success should be rewarded so,\n they draw expectations and do their best efforts in order to achieve them.\n\n\nWe can correlate this with the 8 main external factors the table has presented:\n\n\nSchool Curriculum: As mentioned, the requirement of the language causes the student to learn to achieve high grades (of course, why the student chose such a language if a choice is given can be either extrinsic or intrinsic)\nParental and society's expectations: For both, the student wishes to meet requirements set out by parents and/or society. This of course, if accomplished will either allow the student to get praise and/or respect from the respective owner of such expectations.\nTest and exams: This can go along with school with the student attempting to reach high grades in order to meet requirements set out by such test or exam.\nImmediate Certification and Make Money!: Both can be seen as job-based and for the money: with a certification, the student can be hired and thus make money to support one's living in the adult life.\nCompetition: The simple presence of a challenge to one's superiority can cause one to \"fight back\" in essence: the student reaches to be the best and gain the respect of fellow peers. This can be seen as a result of another external factor that is not mentioned: peer-pressure.\nNever fail: This attitude drives the student to achieve self-set (or maybe set by peers) goals of perfection (or practically flawless).\n\n\nHere, we can now set three other main factors that may fall in the above eight:\n\n\n Motivation to learn English can be affected by the attitude of a number of people, since; they form part of the world\n around the students.\n \n \n a-The society we live in: outside any classroom there are attitudes toward the language learning and the\n English language in particular. Is the image of English in the society positive or negative? All these attitudes will\n affect the student‘s attitudes toward the English language and the nature and the strength of these attitudes affect the\n motivation of the students.\n b-Significant others: the attitude of the student to language learning will be affected by the people who are\n close to him, the attitude of parents and older siblings will be effective, in addition, the attitude of a student‘s peers,\n if they criticize some subjects or activities, the student‘s motivation may be influenced.\n c-The teacher: clearly the important factor in the continuance of student‘s motivation is the teacher. His\n attitude towards the language and the task of learning will be vital. He is considered as responsible about the\n positive classroom atmosphere. \n \n\n\n\n\nTL;DR: Go look at the table to see important external factors that can fuel (extrinsic though not limited to) motivation for formal language learning for a secondary language.", "No this is not a violation of discrimination law as there is no official language (de jure) in the United States at the Federal Level even though English, as the most common language is considered the National Language (de facto). Language is not a Federally recognized basis of discrimination for private business (your local state may require it though). Compared to Canada, where all services must be in English or French to comply with their Official Languages being English and French.\n\nIt could be argued that, given America's very liberal Freedom of Speech laws, that requiring catering to a specific language by law could be challenged as a violation of your First Amendment Rights (after all, if you have freedom of speech, then you should have freedom of speech that others do not understand). Since there is nothing stopping an English Speaking American from learning the language you wish to do business in, nor is it confined to any race or religion (I, as a predominotly European descent, am perfectly capable of learning Arabic... or Japanese... or Navajo...).\n\nWhere the confusion comes from is that in the United States, courts will often provide a linguistic interpreter for those who are not native English Speakers (even if they are conversational, given how technical legal terms can be, it may people who speak English as a Second Language will avail themselves of this service for the sake of making sure the nuance is properly translated)." ]

[ "The profane popularity of the animated South Park television series to some extent obscures how truly radical are the comic minds of the show's creators. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are corrosive and uncompromising social critics whose chief target is essentially the very idea of a cherished belief. They are, it seems plain, the inhabitants of a postmodern condition in which nothing is sacred because nothing means anything. This aesthetic finds its finest articulation in their most recent film collaboration, Team America: World Police, whose targets include a totalitarian dictator, a careless superpower... and Alec Baldwin. Fittingly, the pair reserve their greatest contempt for that last target. \"There's no lamer thing you can do than be an actor,\" says Stone flatly on one of the DVD featurettes on the DVD release of Team America: World Police. Much of what the filmmaking pair (both Stone and Parker wrote the screenplay, and Parker directs) say on the featurette is ironic and funny -- sometimes very funny. But Stone's not smiling when he makes his comment on acting -- and the extravagant puppet mutilation that befalls the likes of Baldwin and fellow actors Tim Robbins and Helen Hunt in Team America: World Police underscores the point. Still, Stone's greatest satiric triumph on the subject of actor-bashing is creating an action movie starring nothing but puppets, and eliciting a pretty darn impressive set of performances out of the wood and fabric \"actors.\" The acid worldview of Team America: World Police has provoked a backlash, and the movie got mixed reviews when in theaters. But to hold such idiosyncrasies against Stone and Parker is to miss the big picture -- Team America: World Police is actually an attack on action movie mogul Jerry Bruckheimer. As the many supporting features on the fabulous DVD release make clear, the film was written, lit, shot and yes, acted just like a standard American action movie, complete with wooden dialogue, preposterous plot points and bad guys with very poor aim. The only difference is that Team America: World Police is done entirely with marionette puppets. The fact that the result is in many ways beyond adequate -- indeed, one could argue the puppets do a brilliant comic job of \"acting\" like real-life bad actors -- is an indictment that encompasses not just those who create such films, but those of us who watch as well. What's Included: The DVD's large slate of featurettes (which, irritatingly, can't be watched in a continuous stream) lucidly detail what quickly becomes a mind-blowing production job. The puppet heads were controlled by computers, which turned out to be incredibly complex. Trey and Stone also had to take into account the dozens of marionette strings descending from above before blocking out the movements of their \"actors,\" and then light the set to avoid shadows from the strings. Once the puppets and sets were ready, the team had to then figure out how to accomplish lofty plot goals and action shots, which include firebombs, floods, plane crashes, a Broadway dance numbers -- and of course, the longest and most elaborate puppet sex scene ever committed to film. These extras make for a compulsively watchable DVD." ]

[ "As one of the world's most popular sports, field hockey produces celebrities in Argentina, the Netherlands and Australia. But the sport is relatively obscure in the United States, where members of the women's national team receive a small monthly stipend and their notoriety comes from outside the country. Later this month, the group heads to London, where it will try to earn the first American medal in the sport in 28 years. With a back-and-forth rhythm like basketball and shots on goal that can exceed 100 miles per hour, it's not that hard to understand why field hockey is immensely popular in other parts of the world. \"We're seen as celebrities; we tend to have police escorts to the field,\" says Claire Laubach, a defender on the U.S. Olympic team who has made several trips to play in South America. \"And we usually stay in the same hotel as the Argentinean team,\" she says. \"Just outside the hotels, they have barricades to keep the people back. It is quite the experience.\" The scene is quite different here in the States. Last month, the Americans played that same squad from Argentina at an exhibition game in Norfolk, Va. There were no police escorts or barricades at the game, which was sparsely attended despite free admission. The generally anonymous U.S. team is a tight-knit group. For the past year, they've largely put careers and relationships on hold while training and living together in California. There has been rock-climbing, pumpkin-carving and training with SEALs. Yes, the kind from the military. Michelle Kasold, a striker for the U.S. squad, recalls that day. \"Basically five straight hours of anything from pushups to crawling on the ground,\" she says, \"to carrying boats, to carrying logs, to anything that they could think of.\" After failing to qualify for the Olympics in 2000 and 2004, the U.S. women logged an international upset last fall by beating Argentina to earn this country's first-ever gold at the Pan Am games and qualify for the Summer Olympics in London. Laubach says that while training with the Navy SEALs wasn't necessarily fun, it provided a sense of unity. \"It's just interesting to see how everyone deals with the stress that they're under,\" she says. \"You will see some people rise to it, and some people will fall to it. But you will see the people who rise to it don't just go on without the other teammate, they help them along. I think it is interesting to see the dynamics that come out of it.\" Laubach and Kasold are both graduates of Wake Forest University. So, too, is the captain of the team, Lauren Crandall. That gives the small private school in Winston-Salem, N.C., more ties to the 16-woman team than any other school. Wake Forest coach Jen Averill calls her former players' accomplishments \"ridiculous — it's just unbelievable pride.\" When Crandall, Laubach and Kasold played for Averill at Wake Forest, they won three Division I national titles. Now they're taking aim at an Olympic medal — a goal the American team hasn't reached since 1984, three years before Kasold was born. \"I think about each day individually, but visualize what it would be like,\" Kasold says. \"I see us standing on the podium because I know that we're good enough, we're capable of doing it. So I see it as the final product, the end, the goal.\" Seven of the team's members were on the 2008 Olympic squad that finished eighth in Beijing. This group is confident and prepared for what awaits in London — including sellout crowds at one of the biggest venues of the games. RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST: One of the world's most popular sports is relatively obscure here in the United States. Field hockey produces cultural stars in Argentina, the Netherlands and Australia. The U.S. does have men's and women's national teams, but if there is any fame it comes outside the country. Later this month, the women's team is heading to the London Olympics in hopes of earning the first American medal in field hockey in decades. North Carolina Public Radio's Jeff Tiberii spent some time with the team. JEFF TIBERII, BYLINE: With the back and forth rhythm like basketball and shots on goal that can exceed 100 miles per hour, it's not that hard to understand why field hockey is immensely popular - in other parts of the world. CLAIRE LAUBACH: We're seen as celebrities. We tend to have police escorts to the field. TIBERII: Claire Laubach is a defender on the U.S. Olympic team and has made several trips to play in South America. LAUBACH: And we usually tend to stay in the same hotel with the Argentinean team. Just outside the hotel, they have barricades to keep the people back - and it is quite the experience. TIBERII: The scene is quite different here in the States. (SOUNDBITE OF A FIELD HOCKEY GAME) TIBERII: The Americans played that same squad from Argentina last month at an exhibition game in Norfolk, Virginia. There were not any police escorts or barricades. Admission was free. This generally unknown team is close. For the past year, the group h", "People in international cities are protesting George Floyd&#8217;s death. What&#8217;s different in this moment that&#8217;s bringing people to the streets overseas? Guests Vashna Jagarnath, senior research associate at the University of Johannesburg. Director of Pan Africa Today and Friends of the Workers. She also works with the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa. (@VashJag) Dan Damon, journalist and host for the BBC programs Newshour and World Update. (@BBCdandamon) Borzou Daragahi, international correspondent for The Independent. Senior fellow at the Atlantic Council&#8217;s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. (@borzou) From The Reading List Washington Post: &#8220;CIA veterans who monitored crackdowns abroad see troubling parallels in Trump’s handling of protests&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;The scenes have been disturbingly familiar to CIA analysts accustomed to monitoring scenes of societal unraveling abroad — the massing of protesters, the ensuing crackdowns and the awkwardly staged displays of strength by a leader determined to project authority.&#8221; The Independent: &#8220;George Floyd protests: How the world is gaping and gloating as massive uprisings spread across US&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;In Russia, state television depicted the fiery mass unrest in the US as akin to a &#8216;dystopian movie.&#8217; Across the Arab world, commentators called protests in America over the killing of George Floyd as an &#8216;American Spring,&#8217; a reference to the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings that toppled regimes across the Middle East.&#8221; TIME: &#8220;‘The Edge of an Abyss.’ How the World’s Newspapers Are Responding as the U.S. Descends Into Chaos&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;As protests over police racism and racial inequality have spread to more than 140 U.S. cities in the week since the death of George Floyd, the world has been watching.&#8221; The Independent: &#8220;The bills for America’s long-term complacency over racism have finally come due&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Between the moments when reports of the videotaped 25 May extrajudicial murder of George Floyd by a white cop emerged and fiery nationwide riots and unrest broke out across the United States, there was a 24-hour window.&#8221; The Guardian: &#8220;&#8216;Abuse of power&#8217;: global outrage grows after death of George Floyd&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;The EU’s top diplomat has described the death of George Floyd as an &#8216;abuse of power,&#8217; adding his voice to growing international unease over the US killing as well as Washington’s subsequent violent crackdown against protesters.&#8221; New Yorker: &#8220;Fury at America and Its Values Spreads Globally&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;At Berlin’s Mauerpark—situated where a section of the Wall separated East and West Germany from 1961 to 1989—a mural of Floyd has been painted on a remnant of the Berlin Wall, alongside the words &#8216;I can’t breathe.'&#8221; The Guardian: &#8220;&#8216;Mr President, don&#8217;t go hide&#8217;: China goads US over George Floyd protests&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Chinese officials and state media have seized on news of the protests sweeping the US, comparing the widespread unrest to the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and accusing Washington of hypocrisy.&#8221; Politico: &#8220;Alarm mixed with glee as world is glued to US protest coverage&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;The world is closely watching the chaotic protests against police brutality now convulsing U.S. cities. And authoritarian leaders, so often on the receiving end of American lectures on human rights, seemed thrilled at the opportunity to seize the moral high ground.&#8221; New York Times: &#8220;Embattled at Home, Trump Finds Himself Isolated Abroad, Too&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;With American cities burning and the coronavirus still raging, killing more people than in any other country, President Trump also has growing problems overseas. He has never before been so isolated and ignored, even mocked.&#8221; Foreign Policy: &#8220;With Scenes of Police Brutality, America’s Beacon to the World Winks Out&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;A world that once looked to the United States to champion democracy and human rights watched with dismay and alarm as police departments across the nation unleashed violent crackdowns on anti-police protesters, targeting looters, demonstrators, and journalists alike, even as President Donald Trump on Monday criticized state governors for their &#8216;weak&#8217; response.&#8221; This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "Racism and right-wing violence are threatening Russia's reputation in international sports as the country prepares to host the Winter Olympics in February and the World Cup soccer finals in 2018. The latest incident was a riot at a soccer match last week in Yaroslavl, between the local Shinnik (Tiremakers) team and Spartak, a squad from Moscow. Fights broke out along the barrier between the opposing fans, then Spartak fans ripped up stadium seats and threw them at riot police who tried to drive the fans back with blasts from a water cannon. The Spartak fans launched fireworks at the police and brandished a Nazi flag with a swastika. The week before in the Russian capital, fans of CSKA Moscow threw bananas and yelled racist monkey chants at black players from the British team Manchester City. The incident prompted Manchester City star Yaya Toure, who comes from the Ivory Coast, to call on all black players to boycott the 2018 World Cup if Russian attitudes don't change. Yaroslavl, CSKA Moscow and Spartak Moscow are all teams whose home grounds will be among the 14 venues of the Russia 2018 World Cup. The fans of FC Zenit, based in St. Petersburg, may be the most notorious for racist and homophobic attitudes. Last year, the biggest Zenit fan club, Landscrona, issued a manifesto demanding that the club field an all-white, heterosexual team. It claimed \"dark-skinned players are all but forced down Zenit's throat now, which only brings out a negative reaction,\" and said gay players were \"unworthy of our great city.\" The club quickly distanced itself from that manifesto. Racism isn't the only problem that worries international sports fans about Russia. A new national law that limits the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people has raised questions about how LGBT athletes and spectators will be treated at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Russian President Vladimir Putin says that people of different sexual orientations will be welcome at the games, and that they will be protected. A Larger Russian Issue Not all sports in Russia have had problems with racism. Black players are among the most celebrated in Russia's basketball leagues, and they have played on the Russian national team. The world track and field championship was held this past summer in Moscow without any incidents. However, racism in Russian sports may reflect a growing climate of xenophobia in the country, and it is most often directed at immigrants from Central Asia and the Muslim population from Russia's Caucasus region. Over the summer, there were a string of confrontations in Moscow at vegetable markets that employ migrant workers. Last month, the murder of a young Slavic man by an immigrant from Azerbaijan triggered a riot by Slavs who attacked a market and beat up workers who were non-Slavic. Police responded by rounding up migrant workers and detaining many of them. Several thousand Russian nationalists rallied Monday in Moscow, using the national holiday of Unity Day to vent their anger against migrants, whom they accuse of boosting crime and taking jobs from Slavic Russians. The United Nations reported in September that Russia has about 11 million migrants, yet Russian authorities say only about 700,000 are legally registered.", "Editor's note: NPR will be continuing this conversation about Being Black in America online and on air. As protests continue around the country against systemic racism and police brutality, black Americans describe fear, anger and a weariness about tragic killings that are becoming all too familiar. \"I feel helpless. Utterly helpless,\" said Jason Ellington of Union, N.J. \"Black people for generations have been reminding the world that we as a people matter — through protests, sit-ins, boycotts and the like. We tried to be peaceful in our attempts. But as white supremacy reminds us, their importance — their relevance — comes with a healthy dose of violence and utter disrespect for people of color like me.\" For more than a week, tens of thousands of people have thronged cities nationwide, staging protests. The demonstrations were triggered by the death of 46-year-old George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis on Memorial Day. Floyd, a black man, died while a white police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes. The protests also reflect outrage over the shooting death of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery while he was jogging through a Glynn County, Ga., neighborhood in February. Three white men were arrested in connection with his death, which was caught on video. Tensions also have flared in response to the death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman who was shot and killed in her apartment by police in Louisville, Ky., in March. Some protests have become violent, marred by looting, clashes with police and countless arrests, and several state officials have enacted curfews. This amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen a disproportionate number of deaths among African Americans, exacerbating challenges in these uncertain times for a people often racially profiled and long oppressed. Cities are burning. Not just with fires but with anger. Black people say they are frustrated. Fearful. Fatigued. \"I'm not going to lie — I am angry,\" said Ellington, a 41-year-old marketing professional who has a 10-year-old daughter. \"As a black man in America, it is already hard enough that we have to fight within ourselves to become a better person, but there are countless forces working outside of ourselves that are also working against us and have been for generations.\" Ellington is one of nearly 200 people who shared with NPR what it's like to be black in America right now. Nicholas Gibbs of Spring, Texas, is particularly concerned about his two toddler sons growing up. \"To be black in America, you have to endure white supremacy. You have to fear the police. To be American, you have the luxury of saying, 'They should have complied!' To be black in America, you have to hope someone recorded your compliance because you may no longer be around to defend yourself,\" the 39-year-old said. Alexander Pittman, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said there's a huge amount of anxiety on a daily basis regarding any contact with police even if you are doing nothing wrong or illegal, because you know it could escalate out of control. \"Being a black man in America, you know you live by a different set of rules,\" Pittman said. He recounted what happened to him a few years ago when he'd just moved to Hollywood, Fla., and went out one evening to walk his dog, Marley. \"I was confronted by several Hollywood police officers. I was also roughed up and detained before being let go,\" the 32-year-old said, adding that no charges were filed against him. As dad to a 4-year-old and a public school teacher, Pittman said he tries to have real conversations with his students and son about the role that race has played in the U.S. historically — and today. \"It's hard, because on one hand I don't believe in riots, looting and violence, but on the other hand, when is enough, enough? We need real, tangible policing reform on a national level, and that has largely been ignored.\" Many black mothers in America expressed fear for the boys and men in their lives. \"I'm weary of living in a constant state of anxiety and fear because I have black and brown men in my life: my son, brothers, friends, grandson, son-in-law and father. I'm bone tired of existing in a system that tells me every damn day that me and my people do not matter,\" said the Rev. Carol Thomas Cissel of State College, Pa. A mother, minister and grandmother, Cissel said her \"DNA will continue to scream in agony\" because black men and boys are not safe in America. \"I will try to hold the pain and soul wounds of my people. I will mourn because I know wishes, words or rituals cannot keep my son and grandson alive.\" Jami Vassar, a 34-year-old fourth-generation military veteran from Aberdeen, N.C., can relate. As a mom of two teenage sons, she worries about their well-being and tries to keep them close. \"They are my gentle giants, but they are big black boys, and I have to remind them that the world doesn't see them as kids and there is real danger just for existing,\" she said. Vassa", "Days after 10 of its members were suspended as part of the University of Minnesota's response to a sexual assault allegation, the rest of the team has declared a boycott. The team is scheduled to play in the Holiday Bowl on Dec. 27. Announcing the boycott at the Golden Gophers' practice facility Thursday night, the players said the suspended athletes, four of whom had already served team suspensions over the case, have now seen their reputations destroyed without the benefit of due process. \"We're concerned that our brothers have been named publicly with reckless disregard in violation of their constitutional rights,\" senior wide receiver Drew Wolitarsky said, according to student-run newspaper Minnesota Daily. \"This effort is by players, and for players.\" As the players took their stand against the university, head coach Tracy Claeys tweeted his support: \"Have never been more proud of our kids. I respect their rights & support their effort to make a better world!\" The coach struck a markedly different tone than university president Eric W. Kaler, who had said one day earlier that Claeys had made the decision to suspend 10 players indefinitely, in consultation with the school's athletics director Mark Coyle. Along with a demand that the players be reinstated, the team is seeking a private meeting with members of the Board of Regents. Wolitarsky said the team wants Kaler and Coyle to apologize, adding that the players \"demand that these leaders are held accountable for their actions.\" The suspensions followed a Title IX investigation into a case that had already resulted in a police inquiry and several players being punished. As Minnesota Daily reports: \"A woman reported to police that she was sexually assaulted after midnight Sept. 2, on the same night after the Gophers beat Oregon State in the home-opener. Claeys suspended four of the players — [Ray] Buford, [KiAnte] Hardin, Dior Johnson and Tamarion Johnson — on Sept. 10 for three games for team rule violations. The Minneapolis Police Department investigated the four players' involvement in the alleged Sept. 2 sexual assault, but the Hennepin County Attorney's Office later declined to pursue charges against the players on Oct. 3. No player was arrested, and Claeys lifted the suspensions the following day.\" The case took a new direction Tuesday, when the school's Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action recommended suspending those four players and six others. School president Kaler said it was \"incredibly disappointing\" to suspend the players. He then cited privacy restrictions that kept him from providing details about the decision, which he said \"is based on facts and on our University's values.\" The dispute comes one year after the University of Minnesota enacted its affirmative sexual consent policy, which is more stringent than policies that require consent to be \"mutually understood.\"", "Why is America's pastime different from the rest of the world's? Two economists examine this question in National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer. Culture and history have a role to play, the authors argue, but some of the most important explanations for how these sports have evolved are economic. Guests: Stefan Szymanksi and Andrew Zimbalist, the two authors of National Pastime. Szymanksi is a professor of economics and strategy at Tanaka Business School at Imperial College London. Zimbalist is the Robert A. Woods professor of economics at Smith College Excerpt from 'National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer' When British soldiers in Afghanistan and southern Iraq wanted to befriend the locals, they played a soccer match. On Christmas Day, 1914, British and German soldiers in the First World War trenches did the same thing. For nearly 100 years soccer has united a divided world -- apart from the world's hyperpower, the United States. You can buy a McDonald's Big Mac on the Champs-Elysées and anything from anywhere in the world on Fifth Avenue, but American sporting culture and the world soccer culture do not mix. In his book Take Time for Paradise, former commissioner of Major League Baseball and president of Yale University Bart Giamatti wrote: \"It has long been my conviction that we can learn far more about the conditions, and values, of a society by contemplating how it chooses to play, to use its free time, to take its leisure, than by examining how it goes about its work.\" Sport reflects culture. If the culture of baseball is American, the culture of soccer has been largely fashioned in Europe. Soccer was formalized in England in the mid-nineteenth century and rapidly spread to Europe and South America. The dominant influences, however, have been European. The gulf between European and American values is nowhere more evident than in the gulf between the cultures of soccer and baseball. Soccer is the world's dominant sport, but only baseball has a World Series. The Soccer World Cup draws an audience larger than the Olympics, but barely registers with American viewers. The antipathy that many Americans feel for the way soccer is played is matched only by the distaste of many Europeans for the American style of play. Many Americans scorn the fact that feeble teams can often win in soccer by concentrating only on defense (they see this as unfair), they snicker that one-third of games end in a tie (because every game should have a winner!), and they are appalled that star players like David Beckham are traded like horsemeat from one team to another, often leaving their home country (such players are disloyal). For their part, Europeans cannot believe that a national sport would change its rules to suit TV, permit lousy teams to continue in the league (even rewarding them with earlier draft picks), or dictate through the draft system which team a player can join. Americans and Europeans have absorbed the structure and rules of their sports into their psyches, turning the arbitrary rules of nineteenth-century administrators into a way of life.", "In a series of early-morning raids, Australian counterterrorism police arrested five men in the Melbourne area Saturday, over their possible involvement in a plot to attack police officers at an upcoming World War I remembrance ceremony. Three of the men were later released; police say that Sevdet Ramdan Besim, 18, \"has been charged with conspiracy to commit acts done in preparation for, or planning, terrorist acts.\" From Sydney, Stuart Cohen reports: \"Police say two of the men were planning terror attacks at ANZAC Day ceremonies, Australia's memorial day, marking the 100th anniversary of the country's entry into World-War I. \"Officials say the planned attack involved knives and was targeted at police. A third man was arrested on weapons charges, while two others in custody are said to be cooperating with police. \"Several of the men arrested are members of a radical Islamic study center and were associates of another man there who was killed back in September after a knife attack at a suburban Melbourne police station. \"Australia's prime minister is urging the public not to allow the threats to stop them from attending major Anzac Day commemorations around the country.\" Australia's ABC news agency gives this rundown of the charges, other than those against Besim: \"A second man, 18, from Hampton Park, was also arrested on terrorism-related offences this morning during a major joint counter-terrorism team operation. \"A third man was arrested for weapons offences and two other men were in custody assisting police with their inquiries, after seven search warrants were executed.\" ABC quotes Australian Federal Police AFP Acting Deputy Commissioner Neil Gaughan saying, \"At this stage we have no information that it was a planned beheading. But there was reference to an attack on police.\" A neighbor of one of the men tells The Age that the sounds of flashbang grenades, smashing glass and smoke alarms woke him up — and that he's surprised by the focus on the house next door. \"We have lived here for roughly eight years, and they have been our neighbors the whole time,\" the man said. \"Seriously never had any issues with them, they have been great neighbors. The son ... he's helped me fix the fence, they bring our bins up for us. We have even said to our kids if anything ever happened to us they could go next door and they'd help.\" If you're wondering about the name ANZAC Day — the name is derived from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The observance marks the anniversary of the landing of troops at the Gallipoli peninsula, in an ill-fated operation in what is now Turkey. Thousands died in the rough campaign.", "Gerry Anderson, the man who along with his wife Sylvia created the cult-favorite TV series Thunderbirds in the 1960s, has died, the BBC reports. Anderson's work was honored by a special set of moving-image stamps in Britain last year; he had suffered from Alzheimer's Disease, which he spoke out against this past summer. Anderson died in his sleep around noon Wednesday, according to his son Jamie, one of Anderson's four children. After making their British TV debut in 1965, the marionette puppets of Thunderbirds — five members of the Tracy family, along with Lady Penelope and her butler, Parker — became a sensation that won international audiences with high-tech tales of adventurers rocketing around the world, and even into space, to fight evil-doers. The series was produced for only two seasons on Britain's ITV. But it was later picked up for syndication by TV stations in the U.S., where it became a staple of Saturday-morning programming for a generation of children. Anderson's iconic visual style and use of \"Supermarionation\" and scale modeling were seen as technical landmarks in TV and film production. His main designer, Derek Meddings, went on to create visual effects for films in the James Bond and Superman franchises of the 1970s and 1980s, among other work. \"To those who met him Gerry was a quiet, unassuming but determined man,\" said Nick Williams of the Fanderson fan club, in a statement posted online by Jamie Anderson. \"His desire to make the best films he could drove him and his talented teams to innovate, take risks, and do everything necessary to produce quite inspirational works. Gerry's legacy is that he inspired so many people and continues to bring so much joy to so many millions of people around the world.\" In addition to Thunderbirds, Anderson created Stingray, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterions, and the live-action series Space: 1999. As recounted on the Fanderson site, Gerry Anderson was born in London's Hampstead area in 1929. After his early dreams of becoming an architect were dashed by the realization that he was allergic to plaster, he then developed an interest in, and talent for, film and advertising work. He eventually founded his own TV production company. The success of Thunderbirds led Anderson to create two feature films: Thunderbirds Are Go (1966) and Thunderbirds 6 (1967). After its cult status was bolstered by years of running in syndication, Thunderbirds was remade as a U.S. live-action film in 2004. In the same year, it also inspired the film Team America: World Police, in which South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker used puppets, musical vignettes and a striking palette of profanity and sarcasm to depict a team's efforts to quash the dastardly plots of terrorists that included late North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il. Anderson died in a nursing home near Oxfordshire, where he was a long-time resident. Reporting the news of his death today, the Oxford Mail also noted his work to fight Alzheimer's. \"Gerry Anderson has been an outstanding supporter of Alzheimer's Society and campaigner on behalf of people with dementia,\" the paper quotes Alzheimer's Society chief executive Jeremy Hughes as saying. \"He was determined, despite his own recent diagnosis, to spend the last year of his life speaking out for others living with dementia to ensure their voices were heard and their lives improved.\"", "The World Cup-winning U.S. women's national soccer team was honored at the White House today, where Obama praised the champions. \"This team taught all of America's children that 'playing like a girl' means you're a badass,\" he said. The U.S. team beat Japan to win the 2015 FIFA World Cup in July, shattering TV ratings for soccer in U.S. the process. Since the victory, players have been on a victory tour that includes talk show appearances, interviews and exhibition games. During the team's visit to the White House, Obama spoke for about 11 minutes about the team's accomplishments and the contributions of individual players, including midfielder Carli Lloyd, who scored a hat trick in the World Cup final. \"And Carli's performance was so good that by the time the game was over, someone had changed her title on Wikipedia from 'midfielder' to 'president of the United States.' Which, by the way, the job is about to open up,\" Obama said. He added, \"I guarantee you Carli knows more about being president than some of the folks who are running. But that's a whole other — that's a whole other topic of conversation.\" Obama's remarks were mostly lighthearted — he teased striker Sydney Leroux about her Chihuahua, which has 10,000 Twitter followers, and mentioned that a farmer in California had built a corn maze in the shape of Megan Rapinoe's face — but he also struck a reflective tone about what the World Cup victory symbolized beyond the world of soccer, highlighting veteran Abby Wambach's \"fairytale\" ending to her final World Cup appearance. \"I'm not sure [Abby] could have written a better ending: a world champion at last, draped in the Stars and Stripes, showing us all how far we've come -– on and off the field –- by sharing a celebratory kiss with her wife.\" Lastly, Obama praised the team for changing stereotypes of women and girls in sports, saying, \"They've inspired millions of girls to dream bigger, and by the way, inspired millions of boys to look at girls differently, which is just as important.\" \"Playing like a girl means being the best,\" the president said at the end of his speech. \"That's what American women do. That's what American girls do. That's why we celebrate this team. They've done it with class. They've done it with the right way. They've done it with excitement. They've done with style. We are very, very proud of them.\"", "When Pakistan clobbered India in the ICC Champions Trophy final on Sunday — pulling off an upset so shocking, ESPN called it \"some diamond-studded, galactic-scale nonsense\" — flabbergasted fans took to the streets in several countries to celebrate the national cricket team's big win. In India, those celebrations got some fans in deep legal trouble. Police have arrested at least 19 people across the country on charges of sedition, according to the Times of India. \"While the entire country was saddened by the defeat, these people were raising slogans in favour of Pakistan and burst crackers on Sunday night, threatening peace in the area,\" Sanjay Pathak, a police inspector in Madhya Pradesh, a state where 15 men were arrested, told the newspaper. \"They celebrated with firecrackers, distributing sweets and raising slogans of 'Long live Pakistan,' \" another Madhya Pradesh police officer, Ramasray Yadav, told The New York Times. \"They expressed hatred toward India and friendship toward Pakistan. They are charged for sedition and criminal conspiracy.\" The Times reports that all the people arrested are Muslims: \"The arrests come as some Muslims in India say they feel a sense of rising alienation. There have been episodes of violence, including by vigilante groups that have staged attacks on Muslims and low-caste Hindus suspected of slaughtering cows, which are considered sacred in Hinduism, the dominant religion in India.\" \"These arrests are patently absurd, and the 19 men should be released immediately,\" Asmita Basu, program director of Amnesty International India, said in a statement. \"Even if the arrested men had supported Pakistan, as the police claim, that is not a crime,\" Basu continued. \"Supporting a sporting team is a matter of individual choice, and arresting someone for cheering a rival team clearly violates their right to freedom of expression.\" But Pathak maintains similar situations have caused unrest in the past. \"This has been happening for several years, whenever there is an India-Pakistan match,\" he told CNN. \"We don't have any previous cases or official complaints on record but those residing in Mohad have told us that this has happened before.\" As NPR's Michel Martin reported, the two countries rarely play each other in cricket, partly because of political tensions between them — which made Sunday's match all the more heavy with consequence. Osman Samiuddin, senior editor of ESPNCricinfo, told Michel that \"450 to 500 million people watched it around the world on TV. ... It's not just a sport. It's not just a religion. I think it's become a compulsion.\"", "In what will be among the largest and boldest urban police reform experiment in decades San Francisco is creating and preparing to deploy teams of professionals from the fire and health departments — not police — to respond to most calls for people in a psychiatric, behavioral or substance abuse crisis. Instead of police, these types of crisis calls will mostly be handled by new unarmed mobile teams comprised of paramedics, mental health professionals and peer support counselors starting next month. \"It's glaringly obvious we need to change the model,\" says San Francisco Fire Dept. Capt. Simon Pang, who is leading the fire department's effort to build these new street crisis response teams. Removing police from most nonviolent psychiatric and behavioral crisis calls is no small shift: they can account for a quarter or more of all police calls for service. If you add in 911 calls for issues or complaints surrounding homelessness, the numbers shoot even higher, police data show. Moreover, surveys show that nearly a quarter of fatal police encounters followed calls about \"disruptive behavior\" directly tied to a person's mental illness and/or substance abuse disorder. Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics surveys show that 64% of those in jail and more than half of all prison inmates have a mental health problem, many of them undiagnosed. \"They're (police) handling these calls the best they can,\" Pang says, \"but the fact remains that because of the traditional system, which is in place out of inertia, you have law enforcement officers responding to nonviolent, noncriminal calls for service for people whose needs are largely social, behavioral or mental. And that's just not right,\" he says. \"The time is now to rethink the entire process so that we can get personnel who are better suited to help people\" in those kinds of crises. These mobile teams better suited will include a specially trained psychologist or social worker, a fire department paramedic and a peer support expert, ideally someone with lived experience in recovery from alcohol or drug abuse and perhaps homelessness. San Francisco's new, unarmed, non-police teams are scheduled, at first, to take over the police calls for code 800 – a broad, catch-all category the police describe as a \"report of a mentally disturbed person.\" The police here got nearly 17,000 of those code 800s last year, according to SFPD data, and nearly 22,000 overall from persons in mental or behavioral crisis. The vast majority of them were non-violent. Of those code 800 calls, the police data show, only 132 of them reported \"a potential for violence or a weapon.\" Rethinking public safety and equity in services Organizers of the new teams in the city's fire and health departments aim to expand the array of nonviolent police calls they take over, including some of the nearly 30,000 \"check on well being\" 911 calls the police receive annually. Details on which of those other police code calls the new teams will eventually respond to are still under discussion, officials involved say. While Denver, and Portland, Ore., have launched similar efforts they remain small pilot reform programs in select sections of those cities. San Francisco's effort is set to be the largest urban effort of its kind to date. The ambitious plan is one key effort to make good on a broader reform pledge this summer by the city's Mayor London Breed, a Democrat, who has vowed to rethink public safety and equity in services following weeks of protests after the deaths of several black women and men at police hands including George Floyd in Minneapolis. The mayor's budget has also proposed re-directing more than $100 million dollars from the police department to initiatives that support under-served communities of color. San Francisco's effort reflects a wider national trend as some cities struggle to find creative, scalable non-police interventions for public safety that work. Frequent 911 Users On a recent day Capt. Pang and an EMS colleague slow-drive through areas of the city that long have dealt with societal challenges. In San Francisco, as with other cities, a relatively small group of people use emergency services almost daily if not several times in a single day; calls that can clog a system and tie up police and fire fighters alike. Anecdotally, fire, police and city officials say the majority of the 911 \"high users\" as they're called are people with dual mental and substance abuse problems. Many of them endlessly cycle in and out of shelters and emergency rooms. They're people such as Steve. \"God bless them! And God bless everybody!\" Steve shouts as he slouches in a broken chair he's found on a street in the city's Mission District. Steve (we're only using his first name to protect his privacy as he recovers from addiction to heroin and methadone and struggles with alcohol dependence ) is one of the city's 911 high users. He's a semi-homeless man who on average uses the emergency sys", "(AP) -- Plenty of goals, no major security issues and a win for the hosts - the World Cup got off to a feel-good start Friday. Germany beat Costa Rica 4-2 in the tournament opener while Ecuador beat Poland 2-0 in the day's other Group A game. Despite thousands of Poland fans crossing the border to get to their team's game in Gelsenkirchen, there were no major security problems reported on the World Cup's first day. As police monitored potential trouble spots, particularly with England playing in one of Saturday's three games, FIFA vowed hooligan activities and racist behavior would be closely monitored, with offending fans expelled from stadiums and banned from attending games. The tournament got under way in Munich with the showiness of the opening ceremony and the highest-scoring opening match since the World Cup began in 1930. Germany striker Miroslav Klose celebrated his 28th birthday by scoring two goals while Philipp Lahm and Torsten Frings added the others for Germany. The host nation never dominated its unheralded opponent but showed the determination it will need to go a long way by overcoming two goals from Costa Rica's Paulo Wanchope. The capacity crowd of 66,000 gave the team a standing ovation. \"That's how I imagined this day more or less,\" Klose said. \"Every opener is difficult and we are pleased that we won. The goals we conceded were our own fault. We must recover better after losing possession.\" Germany captain Michael Ballack missed the game with a right-calf injury but \"can now heal in peace,\" Lahm said. \"If the players want to go out tonight and have a beer, they can do it,\" Germany coach Juergen Klinsmann added. Fears that security checks could lead to long delays were eased as fans filed into the Munich stadium without problems. There was no sign of trouble outside the stadium, despite a line that snaked hundreds of yards at times from the perimeter gates to a nearby railway station. Most fans reported waits of only 10 to 20 minutes. \"The Germans are pretty efficient,\" local fan Sophie Spindler said. \"We didn't think there'd be much trouble.\" Hours before the game Munich police said they removed a World Cup banner with swastikas from a highway bridge and in Berlin police said they raided the headquarters of a far-right political party, confiscating about 3,000 World Cup guides with racist overtones. In the late match, Ecuador striker Agustin Delgado set up a first-half goal and scored in the 80th to quiet a boisterous pro-Poland crowd with a 2-0 victory. Ecuador led on Carlos Tenorio's header in the 24th minute and Delgado doubled the lead with an easy finish in front of the net. Poland finally made chances late on, hitting the goalpost twice in the final minutes. England starts its quest for a first title since 1966 when it plays Paraguay in Group B on Saturday in Frankfurt. The focus will be on its fans as well as stars such as David Beckham and the sidelined Wayne Rooney, who was declared fit to stay with the team, but isn't likely to play against the South Americans. German security forces are paying extra attention because of the hooligan reputation of some England fans. Two were involved in a skirmish with a knife-wielding Greek in Frankfurt's red-light district late Thursday, while three were arrested in Cologne for a brawl with a taxi driver. Both sides look to have injured key players ready to play, with England midfielder Steven Gerrard and Paraguay striker Roque Santa Cruz both training. Also in Group B, Sweden will play Trinidad and Tobago in Dortmund. Saturday's other game has two-time champion Argentina against Ivory Coast in Group C in Hamburg. Argentina's teenage forward Lionel Messi has recovered from a thigh injury and is ready to come off the bench, making Jose Pekerman one of the few coaches with a fully fit squad. \"Messi is in very good shape and if he's in good shape, we're in good shape,\" Pekerman said. Ivory Coast, probably the strongest of the five African teams at the tournament, will be led by Chelsea striker Didier Drogba. \"On paper they are better than us, but I think if we are here it's because we deserve it,\" Drogba said. \"It's going to be hard but one can dream about it. Anything is possible in the World Cup.\"", "It's one of this year's most unlikely collaborations. Shaggy is a Jamaican dance hall star with an unmistakable voice and raunchy hits like 1995's \"Boombastic\" and 2000's \"It Wasn't Me.\" Rock star Sting, his partner, is a little more buttoned-up in comparison. But despite being from two different corners of the music world, the pair's first collaboration album 44/876, out now, is a meeting of the minds — one that's so unexpected, it works in their favor. \"I think surprise is always the most important element in all music,\" Sting says. \"You don't want to just go with people's expectations. You always want to surprise them ... I listen to music expecting a surprise within eight measures.\" \"We're both allergic to boredom,\" adds Shaggy. At first, this team-up was unexpected even to them. Shaggy sent Sting a demo of the track \"Don't Make Me Wait\" and they worked on it together in the studio. After enjoying the experience so much, they decided to repeat the process for a full-length album. Together, they knocked out 20 songs in six weeks. But in order to make it happen, Shaggy had to change the way he records. \"He does music on regular office hours,\" the dance hall star says of Sting. \"My creative process starts at 2 a.m. with a whole lot of weed.\" But Shaggy admits the change to his schedule kept his mind fresh. The guys have more in common than meets the eye. Sting's band The Police pulled from reggae and dance hall influences for tracks like \"Message in a Bottle.\" Both musicians are U.S. immigrants: Shaggy moved from Jamaica to Brooklyn in the 1985 and fought in the first Gulf War in 1991 while Sting moved to the U.S. from his native England more than three decades ago. Though the record is filled with mostly sunny reggae songs, some tracks like \"Dreaming in the U.S.A.\" voice the artists' concerns about life in the country today. The men believe that the idea of America, no matter how paradoxical, \"is a pure one that needs to be protected.\" \"The America of which I fought for, the America of which we fell in love with, the liberties [are threatened],\" Shaggy says. On the 12 songs that made the final cut of the album, it's obvious that the two worked off each other's strengths, Sting's measured reflection balancing out Shaggy's spontaneous and moral parables. \"Sharing a load on an album is a wonderful luxury,\" Sting explains. \"I think there's something in there, although there are serious issues within the music but we've chosen to present them in a way that is attractive and optimistic.\"", "In a decade, soccer's biggest tournament is set to become even bigger. FIFA, the game's governing body, unanimously voted to expand the tournament to 48 teams from 32 teams starting in 2026. The new format starts with the 48 teams playing one another in 16 groups of three. Then, the top two teams from each group will advance into a 32-team group for the knockout stage. \"We are in the 21st century and we have to shape the football World Cup of the 21st century,\" said FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who had promised to expand the number of World Cup teams during last year's election to replace Sepp Blatter. Of the 211 member associations in FIFA, \"135 of them have never played at a World Cup,\" according to Reuters. The change will help develop the game and expand its reach, Infantino said. He added: \"Football fever that you have in a country that qualifies for the World Cup is the biggest promotional tool for football that you can have.\" The expansion is also a money-maker — \"FIFA forecasts the equivalent of $1 billion extra income at current rates from broadcasting and sponsor deals, plus ticket sales,\" according to The Associated Press. And, rebuffing criticism, Infantino said the new format will take place in the same number of days as the previous one, 32, thereby not adding to the time that clubs would need to release players. The tournament will also be played in 12 stadiums, as it is currently. Some powerful stakeholders remain opposed. The European Club Association said the \"regrettable\" decision was based on \"political reasons rather than sporting ones and under considerable political pressure.\" Critics such as The Independent's chief sports writer argue that adding more teams will reduce the quality of play. \"The prestige attached to World Cup qualification will be watered down at a time when international football is already fighting a losing battle for relevance in the face of the club game,\" he writes. But others say the change presents exciting opportunities, such as ESPN: \"The positives ought to be obvious. You would have far fewer dead rubbers (provided the top seeds play first). You would have another round of knockout games, which tend to be more tense because the stakes are higher. Most of all, you would turn the game's global showcase into a truly global event, offering a greater shot to countries who would otherwise only watch it on TV.\" As Infantino put it: \"Football is more than just Europe and South America. Football is global.\"", "This week, President Trump refused to let up on his rebuke of the NFL for allowing players to kneel during the national anthem. His response to these on-the-field demonstrations, along with the growing number of athletes who took part in them, prompted Morning Edition to seek questions from you — our listeners — earlier this month asking what you would like to know about the intersection of sports and activism. Here are some of those questions, along with answers from experts who spoke to NPR. (Morning Edition will answer more listener questions next month on a different sports topic.) Why do we have the national anthem at sporting events at all? What is the connection? Do other nations do this? — Neal J. Ney, Evanston, Ill. Marc Ferris, author of Star-Spangled Banner: The Unlikely Story of America's National Anthem, says the tradition of playing the anthem is largely tied to the growth of the United States in the 19th century and morale during wartime. The first documented instance of the song being played during a sporting event is in 1862 during the Civil War, in Brooklyn, N.Y. Ferris says the 1918 World Series — during World War I — is sometimes incorrectly credited as the first time and also as the one that set the game-opening precedent, though in those early days, it wasn't all that common. \"It was during World War II that it became an every-game phenomenon, in large measure due to the gravity of the situation, but also due to the fact that they now had sound systems and they could amplify a singer, play a recording or have an organist play,\" he says. \"And so, when we declared World War II in December 1941, then the season started in 1942, and that really is when all the teams adopted it.\" Ferris also says the U.S. is unique in how ubiquitous the anthem is at many sporting events, compared with other countries. \"Other nations do not do this to the extent that we do,\" he says, \"playing it before every single contest — a high school volleyball game, a college basketball game, and professional sports.\" In most other parts of the world, Ferris says, \"anthems are only heard during international competition.\" Do players have any legal power in court over coaches and owners if they are benched or fired for protesting? – Andrew Gomez, Washington, Pa. I have heard people say there is no right to political protest or expression on the job, hence players can be compelled to stand for the anthem. Is that really true? Do we cede rights when at work? – Chaz Hinkle, Charlotte, N.C. Kim Wehle, a constitutional law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and former federal prosecutor, says the NFL and other private employers can legally ban employees from exercising free speech rights while on the clock, as long as a government entity isn't directly involved in that ban. \"When it comes to the First Amendment, which is the part of the Constitution that I think most people think about when you're talking about free speech, we do cede rights when it comes to employment,\" says Wehle. \"So the First Amendment actually only binds government behavior,\" she adds, meaning the behavior of government officials. So, she says, it would violate the Constitution if, let's say, any federal employee tried to remove a player from an arena for taking a knee during the anthem. But that is not necessarily the case for private employers, including NFL team owners, according to Wehle. \"There are federal laws that protect speech in the private context if it's related to your employment. But you can make an agreement — sign a contract — that essentially waives those rights. So the first question would be, in the collective bargaining agreement that binds these players' terms of employment with these football teams, does it essentially waive the other federal labor law protections? But my understanding is that it's pretty vague and that it's not clear one way or the other.\" Is there an example of athletes actually having a positive impact on a social or political change in America? — Russ Olson, Spokane, Wash. Louis Moore, history professor at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich., and author of We Will Win the Day: The Civil Rights Movement, the Black Athlete, and the Quest for Equality, notes several examples of athletes who prompted the integration of their sports and their communities. \"Athletes were a major part of the civil rights movement. Jackie Robinson, for example, he was part of a movement to get rid of police brutality. [Former NBA player and Boston Celtics center] Bill Russell, for example, marched in 1963 in Roxbury in solidarity with those marchers in Birmingham. He and his wife also worked to integrate the school system in Boston.\" He also recounts how, in 1965, nearly two dozen black American Football League players boycotted the All-Star game in New Orleans \"when they felt that there was too much racism in the city. The game moved to Houston.\" Also in New Orleans, Moore says: \"The New Orleans S", "Lionel Messi says it's over. He's retiring from Argentina's national team. After losing three previous Copa America finals, Lionel Messi on Sunday night had another chance to win. Argentina and Chile were locked in a scoreless tie, and the match would be decided by penalty kicks. Messi bent down to adjust the ball and backed up to get a running start. The five-time FIFA Ballon d'Or winner licked his lip, gave the goalie a quick appraising glance, and sent a cannonball-like shot over the goal, missing for Argentina when it mattered most. In a promo video before the game, Sports Illustrated called Messi the \"greatest soccer player ever\" and compared him to Muhammad Ali, Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan. He has had a celebrated career with FC Barcelona in Spain. He's famous for breathtaking shots, often taken after a blur of footwork to get past defenders. But aside from an Olympic gold in 2008, Messi has never been able to bring home a major international championship playing for his home country. He was clearly devastated by Sunday night's 4-2 loss to Chile and the part he played in it. The BBC quoted Messi after the game as saying: \" 'For me, the national team is over,' he said after defeat by Chile in the Copa America final. 'I've done all I can. It hurts not to be a champion.' ... \" 'It's been four finals, I tried,' added Messi, who made his debut for Argentina in 2005 and has played 113 times for his country. \" 'It was the thing I wanted the most, but I couldn't get it, so I think it's over.' ... \" 'It's very hard, but the decision is taken. Now I will not try more and there will be no going back.' \" That sounds pretty final. But maybe not. The BBC also quoted Argentine goalkeeper Sergio Romero saying he hoped Messi would \"reflect\" on his decision to retire and reconsider: \" 'I think he spoke while he was heated, because a beautiful opportunity escaped us,' said Romero. 'I can't imagine a national team without Messi.' \" Fans around the world are undoubtedly hoping the same thing. And the sports press is speculating that Messi's \"retirement\" might be short-lived: The remarks by Messi followed reports that he'd been frustrated by mismanagement of Argentina's soccer team. When the team's chartered flight was delayed for several hours on its way to New Jersey for the final game, Messi posted on his Instagram account, \"What a disaster the AFA is, for God's sake.\" As if the stakes weren't already high enough for Messi and his team, Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona said before the match that they shouldn't bother coming back home if they didn't win. As Yahoo Sports puts it: \"Many fans believe that Messi cannot be considered as great as Maradona until he wins a major honor with his country like Maradona did in the 1986 World Cup.\" Even if Messi does go through with his retirement from Argentina's national team, he will presumably continue to play for his club team Barcelona.", "Some of the boldest reform experiments underway in the wake of the national reckoning on police violence and systemic racism following George Floyd's murder are pilot projects in Denver, San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and elsewhere. They're confronting hard questions about what role, if any, police should play in responding to calls for persons in a nonviolent mental health, drug and alcohol or homeless crises. This fall, Oakland aims to join those cities when it launches a pilot project to funnel some nonviolent, noncriminal calls to new, mobile teams of civilians. \"Not only mental health, but the whole range of lower-level issues that shouldn't require a gun to be part of the response,\" says Rebecca Kaplan, the city's vice mayor who has championed the nascent program called Mobile Assistance Community Responders of Oakland, or MACRO. Kaplan says sending police to mental health and behavioral calls they are not trained to handle is a grave mistake cities keep repeating. \"Those cases often go very badly and sometimes horrifically,\" she says. \"We have seen horrific deaths, killings by police throughout the nation when they've been called for matters that deal with mental health or homelessness or public intoxication — or any of these matters that are not a violent crime — and should be better handled by a non-police response.\" One study estimates people with an untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during an encounter with police than other civilians. MACRO is part of a wider effort here by the city council and mayor to rethink how law enforcement operates in a city where the police department has been under federal oversight now for nearly two decades. Oakland's unique strategy The pilot program will operate under the fire department. But the teams will be made up of civilians, not sworn firefighters. And in hiring, the program will place a greater emphasis on lived experience over formal education. It's a unique Oakland take among urban police reform efforts underway. Most cities' pilot street teams are sending out a trained and licensed clinical social worker or psychologist. \"I think the community was crystal clear and has continued to be crystal clear that they do not want a licensed social worker as part of the street team,\" says Oakland Deputy Fire Chief Melinda Drayton. And so Drayton, who's spearheading her department's efforts on MACRO, says the fire department aims to deliver what the community wants. The civilian teams will deescalate problems, check vitals and potentially get the person in crisis off the streets, she says, by connecting him or her to services anywhere in the city except a jail, a psychiatric ward or a hospital. \"We'll be able to take them to city, private nonprofit community-based services, health care clinics. Maybe to their dad's house,\" Drayton says. \"As simple as that. 'Where are you going to feel safe for the night?'\" The plan is for a civilian emergency medical technician to be paired with someone, for example, with first-hand knowledge of the mental health, criminal justice, homeless or drug treatment systems. \"Sometimes people just need to be heard. Sometimes people just need a warm blanket. Sometimes people just need to sober up, you know?,\" says Cat Brooks, co-founder of Oakland's Anti Police-Terror Project, who has worked on this issue for years. \"I mean, sometimes, [people] need to be able to scream. Like, why is that such a big deal? Why does that scare us so much? Look at the world that we live in. I want to scream all the damn time!\" Brooks, a key advocate for MACRO, believes the best people to help are those with street knowledge of the systems that have failed them, what she calls \"the medical industrial complex.\" \"And that complex — doctors, nurses, psychologists, social workers — stereotypes Black, brown and indigenous bodies. Criminalizes Black, brown and indigenous bodies just as much as law enforcement,\" she says. \"And so these models have to be more about the ideology and practice with which we respond.\" Concerns about the pilot Still, some worry emphasizing ideology over formal training goes against the science and art of mental health care and could undermine the program's effectiveness. \"Social workers have a lot to offer as we re-imagine public safety, policing and seek to strengthen our crisis response capacity,\" says Sarah Butts, director of public policy for the National Association of Social Workers. She says the group fully supports communities creating whatever model works best for them. And Butts agrees that peer counselors with life experience in these systems can and are often an important part of any front-line response. But she says extensive education and training do matter when addressing the often complex mix facing someone in a mental health or substance use crisis. \"Social workers will have a skill set — problem-solving, relationship building, de-escalation — that really lends itself to this to this type of comm", "For American superstroker Michael Phelps, the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing are going swimmingly. He has won two gold medals so far, and his 400-meter freestyle relay team set a world record. Spurred on by the trash talk of the French team, the Americans shut everyone up by pulling out a rabbit-from-a-hat victory. On the first leg of the relay, Phelps fell behind to Eamon Sullivan of Australia, who broke the 100-meter world record with his 47.24 performance. The U.S. took the lead in the second phase. But going into the last down-and-back, the powerful French were visibly in front. In fact, French stroker Alain Bernard looked unbeatable — until American Jason Lezak kicked into warp speed and delivered a 46.06 leg that clinched the gold. 'It Was Unreal' \"When I flipped at the 50 and I still saw how far ahead he was, and he was the world record holder, a thought really crossed my mind for a split second: 'There's no way,' \" Lezak said. \"And then I changed. I said, 'You know what? That's ridiculous. It's the Olympics and I'm here for the United States of America. And I don't care how bad it hurts or whatever. I'm just gonna go out there.' ... Honestly in like 5 seconds, I was thinking all these things and just got like a supercharge and just took it from there. ... It was unreal.\" French swimmer Amaury Leveaux's response to the American success: \"A fingertip did the victory. It is nothing.\" Up to now, the U.S. has three gold medals and 11 overall. China has six golds and eight overall. South Korea continued its domination of women's archery, winning its sixth gold medal in as many Olympics. David Kostelecky of the Czech Republic won the trapshooting gold medal. Home team China won gold medals in judo, weightlifting and diving, among other events. In the women's swimming competition, Katie Hoff has won two medals like fellow American Phelps — only different colors. On Sunday, Hoff won a bronze in the 400-meter individual medley, and she won a silver in Monday's 400-meter freestyle. U.S. Dominates China In Basketball The U.S. basketball team chilled China — and its favorite NBA son, Yao Ming — 101-70. Dwayne Wade dropped in 19, and LeBron James added 18. The ego-loaded U.S. team played well together, and if the apparent harmony and success continue, basketball fans will know that despite America's stunning loss in 2004 to Argentina, the U.S. is still the dominant force in world basketball — and that Duke University coach Mike Krzyzewski can most definitely coach on a professional level. Krzyzewski told reporters: \"We have a saying back home that when you're good, you play for the name on the front of your jersey instead of the name on the back. Our guys all play for the name on the front of their jersey.\" Disappointments? There have been a few. American breast stroker Brendan Hansen lost his 100-meter world record and didn't win a medal. Australian freestyler Grant Hackett, favored to win the 400-meter race, came in sixth. Maria Isabel Moreno, a Spanish bicyclist, was barred from participation when she tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. From NPR and Associated Press reports" ]

[ "a roll" ]

[ "In Another Lifetime", "Another Weekend", "No Name", "another man", "Another Day", "another quarter", "The Boy with No Name", "That's Not My Name", "What's Up?", "What a Friend", "The Street with No Name", "What's Happening!!", "What's in It for Me", "things are what they are", "What a Life!", "What A Night", "What If It's You", "Tomorrow will be another day", "In the Name of the Father", "What Car?", "What You Want Is What You Get", "What If We", "another guy's girl", "What a Waste", "Another Dumb Blonde", "Love One Another", "Just Another Day", "Another Day of Sun", "For What It's Worth", "At What Cost", "Another Lonely Christmas", "Another Day in Paradise" ]

[ "Qualified social workers usually earn between $47,000 and $79,000 a year. Social workers with extra responsibilities, such as supervisor social workers, can earn between $65,000 and $86,000." ]

[ "Social workers help relieve people's suffering, fight for social justice, and improve lives and communities. Most people think of social workers when they think of poverty alleviation and child welfare. Many social workers do that kind of work — and we do much more.", "['How do I retire?', 'When can I retire?', 'How much money do I need to retire?', 'How much will I spend in retirement?', 'Should I retire early?', 'When should I take Social Security?', 'How do I apply for Social Security benefits?']", "How much money do I need to bring? This differs by nationality, but for Immigration purposes, you generally need to be able to show a minimum of NZ$350 a month or NZ$4200 for 12 months to meet living costs requirements while you're here. A copy of your bank statement may be sufficient evidence of your available funds.", "How much money do NJPW wrestlers make? About 3.50 an hour.", "Social Security is part of the retirement plan of almost every American worker. If you're among the 96 percent of workers covered under Social Security, you should know how the system works. You should also know how much you'll receive from Social Security when you retire.", "Socialism is an economic and political system. It is an economic theory of social organization. It believes that the means of making, moving, and trading wealth should be owned or controlled by the workers. This means the money made belongs to the people who make the things, instead of a group of private owners.", "['You often get to see the worst of humanity. ... ', 'Social workers often suffer from compassion fatigue. ... ', 'Many social workers carry a high caseload. ... ', 'Social workers face the same risks as police officers in specific situations. ... ', 'Most social workers feel powerless in what they do every day.']", "Originally Answered: Do professional athletes earn too much money? No, they do not earn too much money. People who complain about athletes making too much money either do not follow sports or are ignorant as to why athletes make the type of money they do.", "['Child, family and school social workers. ... ', 'Community social workers. ... ', 'Criminal justice social workers. ... ', 'Gerontological social workers. ... ', 'International social workers. ... ', 'Healthcare social workers.']", "So allow me to offer my definitions: MONEY: Economical capital; how much income and/or wealth you have. STATUS: Social capital; how many admirers you have. ... In other words, social class is not about how much money and status you have, but about how much your ancestors had.", "['What are you? ... ', \"What's your sexual orientation? ... \", 'Do you plan on having children? ... ', 'How much money do you make? ... ', 'How much do you weigh? ... ', 'How old are you? ... ', 'Do you have a health issue? ... ', 'What religion do you practice?']", "['How much money do you make? ... ', 'Are you pregnant? ... ', \"Why aren't you married? ... \", \"Why don't you want/have kids? ... \", 'Do you believe in God? ... ', \"How much does your house/rent/car/purse/child's tuition cost? ... \", 'How many people have you slept with?']", "The facts: As long as workers and employers pay payroll taxes, Social Security will not run out of money. ... Without changes in how Social Security is financed, the surplus is projected to run out in 2035. Even then, Social Security won't be broke. It will still collect tax revenue and pay benefits.", "Au pairs in the UK do not have the same employment status as regular workers and employees. However, depending on how much pocket money they receive, they may have to pay income tax and National Insurance.", "Another difference between the two is knowledge. Wealthy people know how to make money whereas rich people only have money. ... Ultimately, being wealthy means that you're financially free — no matter how much money you make. It's not how much money you make that matters, but how long that money works for you.", "How much does a Construction Worker make in Ontario? The average salary for a Construction Worker is $20.13 per hour in Ontario, which is 7% above the national average.", "['When Am I Eligible? ... ', 'How Is Eligibility Determined? ... ', 'How Much Do I Pay In? ... ', 'How Much Will I Get? ... ', 'Can I Get Social Security If I Work? ... ', 'How Does the Spousal Benefit Work? ... ', 'Do I Owe Taxes on Social Security? ... ', 'How Do I Apply for Benefits?']", "How much does a Construction Worker make in London, ON? The average salary for a Construction Worker is $20.66 per hour in London, ON, which is 9% above the national average.", "['Substance abuse social worker. ... ', 'Community social worker. ... ', 'Hospice & palliative care social worker. ... ', 'Military & veterans social worker. ... ', 'Child, family & school social worker. ... ', 'Psychiatric social worker. ... ', 'Healthcare social worker.']", "What Social Workers Do. Child and family social workers protect vulnerable children and support families in need of assistance. Social workers help people solve and cope with problems in their everyday lives. Clinical social workers also diagnose and treat mental, behavioral, and emotional issues.", "If you want to open a bank account in New Zealand, you can do so provided you have the following: Identification - Rules differ between banks on how much identification you need. You will need at least one form of photo ID, such as a passport (NZ or Overseas) or a NZ-issued driver's licence.", "You do not have a right to change social workers, but you can ask for different one. ... It may be best to then ask your child's social worker's manager (in writing if you can). You should tell them why you think a different social worker would be better for your child. Try not to blame anyone, or make it personal.", "['How much money do we want to spend? vs. How much money can we actually spend? ... ', 'How many guests do we want to invite? vs. Who can we not imagine getting married without? ... ', 'What vendors do we need for our wedding? vs. ... ', 'What do we want our day to look like? vs.']", "For Super Rugby in New Zealand The minimum retainer is NZ$70,000 and the maximum for 2015 will be NZ$190,000. From what I can gather if you are selected for the All Blacks you are paid a minimum of NZ$7,500.00 per week that you are in the squad.", "['The Job Market for Social Workers. ... ', 'Public Policy Social Worker. ... ', 'Administrative Social Worker. ... ', 'Behavioural Health Clinician. ... ', 'Crisis Worker. ... ', 'Family Counsellor. ... ', 'Upgrading Your Education.']", "['Social and human services assistants: $33,750.', 'Rehabilitation counselors: $35,630.', 'Substance abuse/mental health: $44,630.', 'Health educators and community health workers: $46,080.', 'Marriage and family therapists: $50,090.', 'Probation officers and corrections specialists: $53,020.', 'School and career counselors: $56,310.']", "If you go on to attain your clinical social work license after you complete your MSW degree, you can earn a median salary of $53,000. Social workers who find employment as employee assistance program counselor earn median wages of $55,000 per year, according to U.S. News & World Report.", "Players receive NZ$8,495 per test, NZ$3,682 per one-day international and NZ$2,407 for a Twenty20 international. On average, they play 10 tests, 25–30 one-day games and around 10 Twenty20 matches a year. There is also prize money for winning games.", "How do the differences between western and eastern nations divide the EU? Wealthier Western European countries are concerned that so much money is being spent in Central and Eastern Europe. ... The common market unites Europe by allowing goods and workers to travel more freely across borders.", "['Systems architect. Average salary: NZ$127,690 ($86,720)', 'Actuary. Average salary: NZ$123,760 ($84,050) ... ', 'Real estate agent. Average salary: NZ$122,500 ($83,200) ... ', 'Accountant. Average salary: NZ$120,560 ($81,880) ... ', 'Oil and gas engineer. Average salary: NZ$117,960 ($80,120) ... ', 'Investment banker. ... ', 'Construction manager. ... ', 'Software engineer. ... ']", "If you were granted a temporary work visa to allow you to work for an accredited employer in New Zealand, you can apply for a residence class visa under Residence from Work (Accredited Employers) Category. ... be currently employed and have a base salary of at least NZ$79,560 per year.", "The Human Behavior in the Social Environment (HBSE) Track advances knowledge to guide decisions about what social workers need to do and how they should do it. The comprehensive knowledge base of human behavior serves as the glue that holds the multiple facets of social work practice together." ]

[ "On 6 October 1973, as Jews were observing Yom Kippur, the Egyptian and Syrian armies launched a surprise attack against Israeli forces in the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights, that opened the Yom Kippur War. The war ended on 26 October with Israel successfully repelling Egyptian and Syrian forces but having suffered over 2,500 soldiers killed in a war which collectively took 10–35,000 lives in just 20 days. An internal inquiry exonerated the government of responsibility for failures before and during the war, but public anger forced Prime Minister Golda Meir to resign." ]

[ "Nasser made secret contacts with Israel in 1954–55, but determined that peace with Israel would be impossible, considering it an \"expansionist state that viewed the Arabs with disdain\". On 28 February 1955, Israeli troops attacked the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip with the stated aim of suppressing Palestinian fedayeen raids. Nasser did not feel that the Egyptian Army was ready for a confrontation and did not retaliate militarily. His failure to respond to Israeli military action demonstrated the ineffectiveness of his armed forces and constituted a blow to his growing popularity. Nasser subsequently ordered the tightening of the blockade on Israeli shipping through the Straits of Tiran and restricted the use of airspace over the Gulf of Aqaba by Israeli aircraft in early September. The Israelis re-militarized the al-Auja Demilitarized Zone on the Egyptian border on 21 September.", "Arab nationalists led by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser refused to recognize Israel, and called for its destruction. By 1966, Israeli-Arab relations had deteriorated to the point of actual battles taking place between Israeli and Arab forces. In May 1967, Egypt massed its army near the border with Israel, expelled UN peacekeepers, stationed in the Sinai Peninsula since 1957, and blocked Israel's access to the Red Sea[citation needed]. Other Arab states mobilized their forces. Israel reiterated that these actions were a casus belli. On 5 June 1967, Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against Egypt. Jordan, Syria and Iraq responded and attacked Israel. In a Six-Day War, Israel defeated Jordan and captured the West Bank, defeated Egypt and captured the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, and defeated Syria and captured the Golan Heights. Jerusalem's boundaries were enlarged, incorporating East Jerusalem, and the 1949 Green Line became the administrative boundary between Israel and the occupied territories.", "On 7 June 1981, the Israeli air force destroyed Iraq's sole nuclear reactor, in order to impede Iraq's nuclear weapons program. The reactor was under construction just outside Baghdad. Following a series of PLO attacks in 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon that year to destroy the bases from which the PLO launched attacks and missiles into northern Israel. In the first six days of fighting, the Israelis destroyed the military forces of the PLO in Lebanon and decisively defeated the Syrians. An Israeli government inquiry – the Kahan Commission – would later hold Begin, Sharon and several Israeli generals as indirectly responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacre. In 1985, Israel responded to a Palestinian terrorist attack in Cyprus by bombing the PLO headquarters in Tunis. Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon in 1986, but maintained a borderland buffer zone in southern Lebanon until 2000, from where Israeli forces engaged in conflict with Hezbollah.", "On 29 October 1956, Israeli forces crossed the Sinai Peninsula, overwhelmed Egyptian army posts, and quickly advanced to their objectives. Two days later, British and French planes bombarded Egyptian airfields in the canal zone. Nasser ordered the military's high command to withdraw the Egyptian Army from Sinai to bolster the canal's defenses. Moreover, he feared that if the armored corps was dispatched to confront the Israeli invading force and the British and French subsequently landed in the canal city of Port Said, Egyptian armor in the Sinai would be cut off from the canal and destroyed by the combined tripartite forces. Amer strongly disagreed, insisting that Egyptian tanks meet the Israelis in battle. The two had a heated exchange on 3 November, and Amer conceded. Nasser also ordered blockage of the canal by sinking or otherwise disabling forty-nine ships at its entrance.", "In May 1948, following the British withdrawal, King Farouk sent the Egyptian army into Palestine, with Nasser serving in the 6th Infantry Battalion. During the war, he wrote of the Egyptian army's unpreparedness, saying \"our soldiers were dashed against fortifications\". Nasser was deputy commander of the Egyptian forces that secured the Faluja pocket. On 12 July, he was lightly wounded in the fighting. By August, his brigade was surrounded by the Israeli Army. Appeals for help from Jordan's Arab Legion went unheeded, but the brigade refused to surrender. Negotiations between Israel and Egypt finally resulted in the ceding of Faluja to Israel. According to veteran journalist Eric Margolis, the defenders of Faluja, \"including young army officer Gamal Abdel Nasser, became national heroes\" for enduring Israeli bombardment while isolated from their command.", "In 1950 Egypt closed the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping and tensions mounted as armed clashes took place along Israel's borders. During the 1950s, Israel was frequently attacked by Palestinian fedayeen, nearly always against civilians, mainly from the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip, leading to several Israeli counter-raids. In 1956, Great Britain and France aimed at regaining control of the Suez Canal, which the Egyptians had nationalized (see the Suez Crisis). The continued blockade of the Suez Canal and Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, together with the growing amount of Fedayeen attacks against Israel's southern population, and recent Arab grave and threatening statements, prompted Israel to attack Egypt. Israel joined a secret alliance with Great Britain and France and overran the Sinai Peninsula but was pressured to withdraw by the United Nations in return for guarantees of Israeli shipping rights in the Red Sea via the Straits of Tiran and the Canal[citation needed]. The war resulted in significant reduction of Israeli border infiltration.", "Following the 1967 war and the \"three nos\" resolution of the Arab League, during the 1967–1970 War of Attrition Israel faced attacks from the Egyptians in the Sinai, and from Palestinian groups targeting Israelis in the occupied territories, in Israel proper, and around the world. Most important among the various Palestinian and Arab groups was the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), established in 1964, which initially committed itself to \"armed struggle as the only way to liberate the homeland\". In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Palestinian groups launched a wave of attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets around the world, including a massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. The Israeli government responded with an assassination campaign against the organizers of the massacre, a bombing and a raid on the PLO headquarters in Lebanon.", "In July 2006, a Hezbollah artillery assault on Israel's northern border communities and a cross-border abduction of two Israeli soldiers precipitated the month-long Second Lebanon War. On 6 September 2007, the Israeli Air Force destroyed a nuclear reactor in Syria. In May 2008, Israel confirmed it had been discussing a peace treaty with Syria for a year, with Turkey as a go-between. However, at the end of the year, Israel entered another conflict as a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel collapsed. The Gaza War lasted three weeks and ended after Israel announced a unilateral ceasefire. Hamas announced its own ceasefire, with its own conditions of complete withdrawal and opening of border crossings. Despite neither the rocket launchings nor Israeli retaliatory strikes having completely stopped, the fragile ceasefire remained in order. In what Israel described as a response to more than a hundred Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israeli cities, Israel began an operation in Gaza on 14 November 2012, lasting eight days. Israel started another operation in Gaza following an escalation of rocket attacks by Hamas in July 2014.", "On 28 September 1961, secessionist army units launched a coup in Damascus, declaring Syria's secession from the UAR. In response, pro-union army units in northern Syria revolted and pro-Nasser protests occurred in major Syrian cities. Nasser sent Egyptian special forces to Latakia to bolster his allies, but withdrew them two days later, citing a refusal to allow inter-Arab fighting. Addressing the UAR's breakup on 5 October, Nasser accepted personal responsibility and declared that Egypt would recognize an elected Syrian government. He privately blamed interference by hostile Arab governments. According to Heikal, Nasser suffered something resembling a nervous breakdown after the dissolution of the union; he began to smoke more heavily and his health began to deteriorate.", "On 11 March 1978, a PLO guerilla raid from Lebanon led to the Coastal Road Massacre. Israel responded by launching an invasion of southern Lebanon to destroy the PLO bases south of the Litani River. Most PLO fighters withdrew, but Israel was able to secure southern Lebanon until a UN force and the Lebanese army could take over. The PLO soon resumed its policy of attacks against Israel. In the next few years, the PLO infiltrated the south and kept up a sporadic shelling across the border. Israel carried out numerous retaliatory attacks by air and on the ground.", "Despite the commanded withdrawal of Egyptian troops, about 2,000 Egyptian soldiers were killed during engagement with Israeli forces, and some 5,000 Egyptian soldiers were captured by the Israeli Army. Amer and Salah Salem proposed requesting a ceasefire, with Salem further recommending that Nasser surrender himself to British forces. Nasser berated Amer and Salem, and vowed, \"Nobody is going to surrender.\" Nasser assumed military command. Despite the relative ease in which Sinai was occupied, Nasser's prestige at home and among Arabs was undamaged. To counterbalance the Egyptian Army's dismal performance, Nasser authorized the distribution of about 400,000 rifles to civilian volunteers and hundreds of militias were formed throughout Egypt, many led by Nasser's political opponents.", "According to Sadat, it was only when the Israelis cut off the Egyptian garrison at Sharm el-Sheikh that Nasser became aware of the situation's gravity. After hearing of the attack, he rushed to army headquarters to inquire about the military situation. The simmering conflict between Nasser and Amer subsequently came to the fore, and officers present reported the pair burst into \"a nonstop shouting match\". The Supreme Executive Committee, set up by Nasser to oversee the conduct of the war, attributed the repeated Egyptian defeats to the Nasser–Amer rivalry and Amer's overall incompetence. According to Egyptian diplomat Ismail Fahmi, who became foreign minister during Sadat's presidency, the Israeli invasion and Egypt's consequent defeat was a result of Nasser's dismissal of all rational analysis of the situation and his undertaking of a series of irrational decisions.", "Following Anwar Sadat's ascension to the Egyptian presidency, Libya's relations with Egypt deteriorated. Sadat was perturbed by Gaddafi's unpredictability and insistence that Egypt required a cultural revolution. In February 1973, Israeli forces shot down Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114, which had strayed from Egyptian airspace into Israeli-held territory during a sandstorm. Gaddafi was infuriated that Egypt had not done more to prevent the incident, and in retaliation planned to destroy the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2, a British ship chartered by American Jews to sail to Haifa for Israel's 25th anniversary. Gaddafi ordered an Egyptian submarine to target the ship, but Sadat cancelled the order, fearing a military escalation.", "With Lieutenant-General Matthew Ridgway assuming the command of the U.S. Eighth Army on 26 December, the PVA and the KPA launched their Third Phase Offensive (also known as the \"Chinese New Year's Offensive\") on New Year's Eve of 1950. Utilizing night attacks in which UN Command fighting positions were encircled and then assaulted by numerically superior troops who had the element of surprise, the attacks were accompanied by loud trumpets and gongs, which fulfilled the double purpose of facilitating tactical communication and mentally disorienting the enemy. UN forces initially had no familiarity with this tactic, and as a result some soldiers panicked, abandoning their weapons and retreating to the south. The Chinese New Year's Offensive overwhelmed UN forces, allowing the PVA and KPA to conquer Seoul for the second time on 4 January 1951.", "On 21 May, Amer asked Nasser to order the Straits of Tiran blockaded, a move Nasser believed Israel would use as a casus belli. Amer reassured him that the army was prepared for confrontation, but Nasser doubted Amer's assessment of the military's readiness. According to Nasser's vice president Zakaria Mohieddin, although \"Amer had absolute authority over the armed forces, Nasser had his ways of knowing what was really going on\". Moreover, Amer anticipated an impending Israeli attack and advocated a preemptive strike. Nasser refused the call upon determination that the air force lacked pilots and Amer's handpicked officers were incompetent. Still, Nasser concluded that if Israel attacked, Egypt's quantitative advantage in manpower and arms could stave off Israeli forces for at least two weeks, allowing for diplomacy towards a ceasefire. Towards the end of May, Nasser increasingly exchanged his positions of deterrence for deference to the inevitability of war, under increased pressure to act by both the general Arab populace and various Arab governments. On 26 May Nasser declared, \"our basic objective will be to destroy Israel\". On 30 May, King Hussein committed Jordan in an alliance with Egypt and Syria.", "The First Intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule, broke out in 1987, with waves of uncoordinated demonstrations and violence occurring in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Over the following six years, the Intifada became more organised and included economic and cultural measures aimed at disrupting the Israeli occupation. More than a thousand people were killed in the violence. During the 1991 Gulf War, the PLO supported Saddam Hussein and Iraqi Scud missile attacks against Israel. Despite public outrage, Israel heeded US calls to refrain from hitting back and did not participate in that war.", "After secretly crossing the Yalu River on 19 October, the PVA 13th Army Group launched the First Phase Offensive on 25 October, attacking the advancing UN forces near the Sino-Korean border. This military decision made solely by China changed the attitude of the Soviet Union. Twelve days after Chinese troops entered the war, Stalin allowed the Soviet Air Force to provide air cover, and supported more aid to China. After decimating the ROK II Corps at the Battle of Onjong, the first confrontation between Chinese and U.S. military occurred on 1 November 1950; deep in North Korea, thousands of soldiers from the PVA 39th Army encircled and attacked the U.S. 8th Cavalry Regiment with three-prong assaults—from the north, northwest, and west—and overran the defensive position flanks in the Battle of Unsan. The surprise assault resulted in the UN forces retreating back to the Ch'ongch'on River, while the Chinese unexpectedly disappeared into mountain hideouts following victory. It is unclear why the Chinese did not press the attack and follow up their victory.", "In mid May 1967, the Soviet Union issued warnings to Nasser of an impending Israeli attack on Syria, although Chief of Staff Mohamed Fawzi considered the warnings to be \"baseless\". According to Kandil, without Nasser's authorization, Amer used the Soviet warnings as a pretext to dispatch troops to Sinai on 14 May, and Nasser subsequently demanded UNEF's withdrawal. Earlier that day, Nasser received a warning from King Hussein of Israeli-American collusion to drag Egypt into war. The message had been originally received by Amer on 2 May, but was withheld from Nasser until the Sinai deployment on 14 May. Although in the preceding months, Hussein and Nasser had been accusing each other of avoiding a fight with Israel, Hussein was nonetheless wary that an Egyptian-Israeli war would risk the West Bank's occupation by Israel. Nasser still felt that the US would restrain Israel from attacking due to assurances that he received from the US and Soviet Union. In turn, he also reassured both powers that Egypt would only act defensively.", "In 1970, President Nasser died and was succeeded by Anwar Sadat. Sadat switched Egypt's Cold War allegiance from the Soviet Union to the United States, expelling Soviet advisors in 1972. He launched the Infitah economic reform policy, while clamping down on religious and secular opposition. In 1973, Egypt, along with Syria, launched the October War, a surprise attack to regain part of the Sinai territory Israel had captured 6 years earlier. it presented Sadat with a victory that allowed him to regain the Sinai later in return for peace with Israel.", "Meanwhile, in January 1968, Nasser commenced the War of Attrition to reclaim territory captured by Israel, ordering attacks against Israeli positions east of the then-blockaded Suez Canal. In March, Nasser offered Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement arms and funds after their performance against Israeli forces in the Battle of Karameh that month. He also advised Arafat to think of peace with Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian state comprising the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Nasser effectively ceded his leadership of the \"Palestine issue\" to Arafat.", "In July 1956, Nasser unilaterally nationalised the Suez Canal. The response of Anthony Eden, who had succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister, was to collude with France to engineer an Israeli attack on Egypt that would give Britain and France an excuse to intervene militarily and retake the canal. Eden infuriated US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, by his lack of consultation, and Eisenhower refused to back the invasion. Another of Eisenhower's concerns was the possibility of a wider war with the Soviet Union after it threatened to intervene on the Egyptian side. Eisenhower applied financial leverage by threatening to sell US reserves of the British pound and thereby precipitate a collapse of the British currency. Though the invasion force was militarily successful in its objectives, UN intervention and US pressure forced Britain into a humiliating withdrawal of its forces, and Eden resigned.", "The Israel Defense Forces is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and is headed by its Chief of General Staff, the Ramatkal, subordinate to the Cabinet. The IDF consist of the army, air force and navy. It was founded during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War by consolidating paramilitary organizations—chiefly the Haganah—that preceded the establishment of the state. The IDF also draws upon the resources of the Military Intelligence Directorate (Aman), which works with Mossad and Shabak. The Israel Defense Forces have been involved in several major wars and border conflicts in its short history, making it one of the most battle-trained armed forces in the world.", "Under Ptolemy II, Callimachus, Apollonius of Rhodes, Theocritus and a host of other poets made the city a center of Hellenistic literature. Ptolemy himself was eager to patronise the library, scientific research and individual scholars who lived on the grounds of the library. He and his successors also fought a series of wars with the Seleucids, known as the Syrian wars, over the region of Coele-Syria. Ptolemy IV won the great battle of Raphia (217 BCE) against the Seleucids, using native Egyptians trained as phalangites. However these Egyptian soldiers revolted, eventually setting up a native breakaway Egyptian state in the Thebaid between 205-186/5 BCE, severely weakening the Ptolemaic state.", "After years of negotiation, three Great Powers, Russia, the United Kingdom and France, decided to intervene in the conflict and each nation sent a navy to Greece. Following news that combined Ottoman–Egyptian fleets were going to attack the Greek island of Hydra, the allied fleet intercepted the Ottoman–Egyptian fleet at Navarino. After a week-long standoff, a battle began which resulted in the destruction of the Ottoman–Egyptian fleet. A French expeditionary force was dispatched to supervise the evacuation of the Egyptian army from the Peloponnese, while the Greeks proceeded to the captured part of Central Greece by 1828. As a result of years of negotiation, the nascent Greek state was finally recognized under the London Protocol in 1830.", "General Bonaparte and his expedition eluded pursuit by the Royal Navy and landed at Alexandria on 1 July. He fought the Battle of Shubra Khit against the Mamluks, Egypt's ruling military caste. This helped the French practice their defensive tactic for the Battle of the Pyramids, fought on 21 July, about 24 km (15 mi) from the pyramids. General Bonaparte's forces of 25,000 roughly equalled those of the Mamluks' Egyptian cavalry. Twenty-nine French and approximately 2,000 Egyptians were killed. The victory boosted the morale of the French army.", "The following day, the armies of four Arab countries—Egypt, Syria, Transjordan and Iraq—entered what had been British Mandatory Palestine, launching the 1948 Arab–Israeli War; Contingents from Yemen, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Sudan joined the war. The apparent purpose of the invasion was to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state at inception, and some Arab leaders talked about driving the Jews into the sea. According to Benny Morris, Jews felt that the invading Arab armies aimed to slaughter the Jews. The Arab league stated that the invasion was to restore law and order and to prevent further bloodshed.", "In the aftermath of the 1986 U.S. attack, the army was purged of perceived disloyal elements, and in 1988, Gaddafi announced the creation of a popular militia to replace the army and police. In 1987, Libya began production of mustard gas at a facility in Rabta, although publicly denying it was stockpiling chemical weapons, and unsuccessfully attempted to develop nuclear weapons. The period also saw a growth in domestic Islamist opposition, formulated into groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. A number of assassination attempts against Gaddafi were foiled, and in turn, 1989 saw the security forces raid mosques believed to be centres of counter-revolutionary preaching. In October 1993, elements of the increasingly marginalised army initiated a failed coup in Misrata, while in September 1995, Islamists launched an insurgency in Benghazi, and in July 1996 an anti-Gaddafist football riot broke out in Tripoli. The Revolutionary Committees experienced a resurgence to combat these Islamists.", "Israel retaliated against Egyptian shelling with commando raids, artillery shelling and air strikes. This resulted in an exodus of civilians from Egyptian cities along the Suez Canal's western bank. Nasser ceased all military activities and began a program to build a network of internal defenses, while receiving the financial backing of various Arab states. The war resumed in March 1969. In November, Nasser brokered an agreement between the PLO and the Lebanese military that granted Palestinian guerrillas the right to use Lebanese territory to attack Israel.", "In November 1956, Eisenhower forced an end to the combined British, French and Israeli invasion of Egypt in response to the Suez Crisis, receiving praise from Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Simultaneously he condemned the brutal Soviet invasion of Hungary in response to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He publicly disavowed his allies at the United Nations, and used financial and diplomatic pressure to make them withdraw from Egypt. Eisenhower explicitly defended his strong position against Britain and France in his memoirs, which were published in 1965.", "It was at Port Said that Nasser saw a confrontation with the invading forces as being the strategic and psychological focal point of Egypt's defense. A third infantry battalion and hundreds of national guardsmen were sent to the city as reinforcements, while two regular companies were dispatched to organize popular resistance. Nasser and Boghdadi traveled to the canal zone to boost the morale of the armed volunteers. According to Boghdadi's memoirs, Nasser described the Egyptian Army as \"shattered\" as he saw the wreckage of Egyptian military equipment en route. When British and French forces landed in Port Said on 5–6 November, its local militia put up a stiff resistance, resulting in street-to-street fighting. The Egyptian Army commander in the city was preparing to request terms for a ceasefire, but Nasser ordered him to desist. The British-French forces managed to largely secure the city by 7 November. Between 750 and 1,000 Egyptians were killed in the battle for Port Said.", "In mid May 1967, the Soviet Union issued warnings to Nasser of an impending Israeli attack on Syria. Although the chief of staff Mohamed Fawzi verified them as \"baseless\", Nasser took three successive steps that made the war virtually inevitable: On 14 May he deployed his troops in Sinai near the border with Israel, on 19 May he expelled the UN peacekeepers stationed in the Sinai Peninsula border with Israel, and on 23 May he closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. On 26 May Nasser declared, \"The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel\".", "Nasser's return to Egypt coincided with Husni al-Za'im's Syrian coup d'état. Its success and evident popular support among the Syrian people encouraged Nasser's revolutionary pursuits. Soon after his return, he was summoned and interrogated by Prime Minister Ibrahim Abdel Hadi regarding suspicions that he was forming a secret group of dissenting officers. According to secondhand reports, Nasser convincingly denied the allegations. Abdel Hadi was also hesitant to take drastic measures against the army, especially in front of its chief of staff, who was present during the interrogation, and subsequently released Nasser. The interrogation pushed Nasser to speed up his group's activities." ]

[ "For LASSO Case you probably can estimate $ L $ pretty good and the best would be using FISTA for acceleration of the Proximal Gradient Method.\n\nIn general you can use the Line Search as above (Neal Parikh and Stephen Boyd - Proximal Algorithms Page 20):\n\n\n\nOr (L. Vandenberghe - Proximal Gradient Method Page 6-20):\n\n\n\nI expect them to be equivalent, Though it seems Boyd's is easier computationally.\n\nBetter and more robust choice would be Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM)." ]

[ "I found this question because I was searching for an answer to it myself...so take my answer on this with a grain of salt...but I believe that it's similar to policy gradients. In policy gradients you increase the probability of taking actions when you see a large reward which followed those actions...that seems to be the idea behind MENACE as well.", "I'll begin with a general remark: first-order information (i.e., using only gradients, which encode slope) can only give you directional information: It can tell you that the function value decreases in the search direction, but not for how long. To decide how far to go along the search direction, you need extra information (gradient descent with constant step lengths can fail even for convex quadratic problems). For this, you basically have two choices:\n\n\nUse second-order information (which encodes curvature), for example by using Newton's method instead of gradient descent (for which you can always use step length $1$ sufficiently close to the minimizer).\nTrial and error (by which of course I mean using a proper line search such as Armijo).\n\n\nIf, as you write, you don't have access to second derivatives, and evaluating the obejctive function is very expensive, your only hope is to compromise: use enough approximate second-order information to get a good candidate step length such that a line search needs only $\\mathcal{O}(1)$ evaluations (i.e., at most a (small) constant multiple of the effort you need to evaluate your gradient).\n\nOne possibility is to use Barzilai--Borwein step lengths (see, e.g., Fletcher: On the Barzilai-Borwein method. Optimization and control with applications, 235–256, Appl. Optim., 96, Springer, New York, 2005). The idea is to use a finite difference approximation of the curvature along the search direction to get an estimate of the step size. Specifically, choose $\\alpha_0&gt;0$ arbitrary, set $g^0:=\\nabla f(x^0)$ and then for $k=0,...$:\n\n\nSet $s^k = -\\alpha_k^{-1} g^k$ and $x^{k+1}=x^k+s^k$\nEvaluate $g^{k+1}=\\nabla f(x^{k+1})$ and set $y^k = g^{k+1}-g^{k}$\nSet $\\alpha_{k+1} = \\frac{(y^k)^Ty^k}{(y^k)^Ts^k}$\n\n\nThis choice can be shown to converge (in practice very quickly) for quadratic functions, but the convergence is not monotone (i.e., the function value $f(x^{k+1})$ can be larger than $f(x^k)$, but only once in a while; see the plot on page 10 in Fletcher's paper). For non-quadratic functions, you need to combine this with a line search, which needs to be modified to deal with the non-monotonicity. One possibility is choosing $\\sigma_k \\in (0,\\alpha_k^{-1})$ (e.g., by backtracking) such that\n$$ f(x^k - \\sigma_k g^k) \\leq \\max_{\\max(k-M,1)\\leq j\\leq k} f(x^j) - \\gamma \\sigma_k (g^k)^Tg^k,$$\nwhere $\\gamma\\in(0,1)$ is the typical Armijo parameter and $M$ controls the degree of monotonicity (e.g., $M=10$). There's also a variant that uses gradient values instead of function values, but in your case the gradient is even more expensive to evaluate than the function, so that doesn't make sense here. (Note: You can of course try to blindly accept the BB step lengths and trust your luck, but if you need any sort of robustness -- as you wrote in your comments -- that would be a really bad idea.)\n\nAn alternative (and, in my opinion, much better) approach would be to use this finite difference approximation already in the computation of the search direction; this is called a quasi-Newton method. The idea is to incrementally build an approximation of the Hessian $\\nabla^2 f(x^k)$ by using differences of gradients. For example, you could take $H_0=\\mathrm{Id}$ (the identity matrix) and for $k=0,\\dots$ solve\n$$H_{k}s^{k} = -g^{k},\\label{cc1}\\tag{1}$$\nand set\n$$H_{k+1} = H_k + \\frac{(y^k-H_ks^k)^T(s^k)^T}{(s^k)^Ts^k}$$\nwith $y^k$ as above and $x^{k+1} = x^k +s^k$. (This is called Broyden update and is rarely used in practice; a better but slightly more complicated update is the BFGS update, for which -- and more information -- I refer to Nocedal and Wright's book Numerical Optimization.) The downside is that a) this would require solving a linear system in each step (but only of the size of the unknown which in your case is an initial condition, hence the effort should be dominated by solving PDEs to get the gradient; also, there exist update rules for approximations of the inverse Hessian, which only require computing a single matrix-vector product) and b) you still need a line search to guarantee convergence...\n\nLuckily, in this context there exists an alternative approach that makes use of every function evaluation. The idea is that for $H_k$ symmetric and positive definite (which is guaranteed for the BFGS update), solving \\eqref{cc1} is equivalent to minimizing the quadratic model\n$$q_k(s) = \\frac12 s^T H_k s + s^T g^k.$$\nIn a trust region method, you would do so with the additional constraint that $\\|s\\| \\leq \\Delta_k$, where $\\Delta_k$ is an appropriately chosen trust region radius (which plays the role of the step length $\\sigma_k$). The key idea is now to choose this radius adaptively, based on the computed step. Specifically, you look at the ratio\n$$ \\rho_k := \\frac{f(x^k)-f(x^k+s^k)}{f(x^k)-q_k(s^k)}$$\nof the actual and predicted reduction in function value. If $\\rho_k$ is very small, your model was bad, and you discard $s^k$ and try again with $\\Delta_{k+1}&lt;\\Delta_k$. If $\\rho_k$ is close to $1$, your model is good, and you set $x^{k+1}=x^k+s^k$ and increase $\\Delta_{k+1}&gt;\\Delta_k$. Otherwise you just set $x^{k+1}=x^k+s^k$ and leave $\\Delta_k$ alone. To compute the actual minimizer $s^k$ of $\\min_{\\|s\\|\\leq \\Delta_k} q_k(s)$, there exist several strategies to avoid having to solve the full constrained optimization problem; my favorite is Steihaug's truncated CG method. For more details, I again refer to Nocedal and Wright.", "Your graphic is omitting nodes of the tree, branching points, which are essential for trees and phylogeny.\n\nWhen you read the data file, you should count the brackets ((( ))) because they signify where the tree has nodes, common ancestors.\n\nYou should generate simple phylogeny trees, prior to doing complex data mining for similarity. The names are in latin? there are genetic distance numbers? What format and data are you using? You have given the common animal names. you may have to use a database of common-and-latin-names to be ables to search \"tiger\"... that database will return \"panthera tigris tigris\"... And then you can start crawling up and down the tree branches to search for animals related to tigris tigris, by counting brackets and marking species close to that name. \n\nTo prevent the tree exploding to 5000 animals, you can \n1/define a search depth. Depth 5, Five, will not go further than five brackets: (((((panthera_tigris_tigris)(lion)(cheetah)))))\n2/represent a random fraction of the species (1/100 gives 50 animals from a 5000 tree)\n3/use statistics measures to select certain animals based on data mining. \n\nIf you want to travel from whales to monkeys, you will have most of the mammalian family, and you will be able to count nodes and brackets by the dozens. \n\nNot that parsing 5000 species has a big computational load that can take 1 hour to read through once, let alone 40 times!\n\nWhichever statistics you are using to measure similarity, number of brackets / genetic distance numbers, you should have once represented trees as branches, nodes and leaves, because that is what tree data is meant to represent. \n\nI'd recommend that you draw a tree using nodes and random animal selection, like 1% chance the animal is drawn in the final tree. When your tree has branches and is drawing OK, change the 1% selection line for the complex MST / MCD selection.", "The process of urine concentration in mammals occurs due to the interaction of the loop of Henle and its nearby collecting tubule. When someone is dehydrated, the kidney will aim to a maximal water reabsorption.\nTo concentrate urine, a maximal amount of ions will be reabsorbed. This is to maximalize the concentration gradient for water. However, the main driving force for water reabsorption is the urea concentration gradient (created by the loop of Henle). Then aquaporins will allow water to flow from the collecting tubule to the nearby medulla because of the presence of the neighboring loop of Henle. It is this proximity between the loop of Henle and the collecting tubule that allows such a high efficiency for water reabsorption.\n\nConcentrating urine is not about leaving more ions in the water, it is about reabsorbing a maximal amount of water.", "While mappings and abbreviations in insert mode should work, Vim has a large number of plugins -- some of them may have proven and largely tested solutions since what you are asking is probably a common feature.\n\nSome of the keywords you could try searching plugins for are complete and braces.\nThis last search, for example, brings vim-c-cr:\n\n\n Finish braces, brackets and parentheses with ctrl+enter in vim\n \n A very simple and small (33 lines of vimscript) plugin that maps\n ctrl+enter () and ctrl+c ( for terminal-vim users) in\n insert mode to finish braces ({}), brackets ([]) and parentheses (())\n for you and puts your cursor tabbed over on a blank line between them.\n\n\nBut you certainly can find more plugins with similar behavior.", "I don't think the breakpoints for the new brackets have been released yet, but given that the standard deduction is being doubled and that the current highest bracket of 39.6% is being eliminated, the effect is probably a tax cut. This in line with the other policies listed like eliminating the estate tax or the 15% corporate rate proposed. But since your question seemed to be about tax brackets in the first place, and why 3 brackets would hypothetical be better, I'll talk about that instead.\n\nThis lists the current brackets and their rates. So for example, if someone earns $20,000 they would be taxed at 0.1($9,325)+0.15($10,675)=$2533.75 (ignoring any possible deductions). This means that the leading portions of income are taxed at a lower rate that the trailing portions of income. The theory behind tax brackets, in which different portions of income are taxed at different rates is based on the idea of money having marginal utility. That is to say, the more money that an individual accumulates, the less value an additional unit of money will have to that individual. This is intuitively obvious when looking at any number of examples; a billionaire gaining another million dollars would not experience an appreciable change in his or her life, while $1000 might make a huge difference to someone in poverty. If you accept the marginal utility of money as a premise, then tax brackets are obviously a good thing so long as the value of governmental goods and services exceed the value of the money being taxed. In that case, even having something like a logarithmic tax curve would be better since it could track marginal utility more closely.\n\nHaving 3 brackets instead of 7 would make any attempted tracking of marginal utility harder. More brackets that apply to all income (including capital gains), would be better than less. Given how the Trump plan has been presented so far, its probably just a tax cut under the guise of making things \"simpler\". The reduction of number of brackets wouldn't even do that though since the calculation of personal taxes is pretty much all about deductions, which aren't even complicated for the vast majority of people.", "Proximity search worked fine for me in 4.7.11 and 4.7.10. Proximity search is available on the demo if you select a geocoding provider (Administer menu » System Settings » Mapping and Geocoding). \n\nI'd advise checking/changing your system's geocoding settings. If that doesn't work, please update the question with the settings that aren't working, this is likely specific to your settings.", "The LMS algorithm is based on the idea of gradient descent to search for the optimal (minimum error) condition, with a cost function equal to the mean squared error at the filter output. However, it doesn't actually calculate the gradient directly, as that would require knowing:\n\n$$\nE(\\mathbf{x}[n]e^*[n])\n$$\n\nwhere $\\mathbf{x}[n]$ is the input vector and $e[n]$ is the filter output error at time instant $n$. The value of this expectation would typically be something that isn't known ahead of time, so it's instead approximated (in most cases) by the instantaneous value $\\mathbf{x}[n]e^*[n]$ instead. This (described in more detail at Wikipedia) is the key feature of the LMS filter structure.\n\nGradient descent just refers to the method used to hunt for the minimum-cost solution; it doesn't force the use of any particular cost function. An LMS filter is a specialization of gradient descent that uses a mean-squared error cost function and the aforementioned approximation for the gradient at each time step.\n\nStochastic gradient descent would refer to techniques that don't directly compute the gradient, instead using an approximation to the gradient that has similar stochastic properties (e.g. the same expected value). LMS would be an example of an algorithm that uses a SGD approach, using the approximation I described above.", "To make the interweaved appearance you can divide some shapes to 2 parts:\n\n\n\nDivided shapes can occur in different levels in the stack.\n\nPowerpoint has very poor control for colorings. Your example has carefully adjusted gradient fills to make some 3D appearace. My old Powerpoint doesn't have arbitary gradient fill tools, but there's in the fill effects section vertical, horizontal and diagonal gradients to select from. Also the ending colors are selectable:\n\n\n\nThe shapes are not rectangular, they have fitting angles. Powerpoint has poor drawing tools, but you can cover parts with paper. A white shape without edge line can be used:\n\n\n\nNot asked: It can be useful for developing tolerance and workaroundability to fight with Powerpoint's limitations, but still I recommend you to get a proper vector drawing program to make designs. Start with Inkscape (=freeware) if you cannot afford Illustrator, CorelDraw etc.. And if you can afford them, it's still a good idea to try Inkscape. It has plenty of steam as long as you do not design for CMYK printing (=an area where Microsoft Powerpoint is as disabled)", "Surrogate modeling is one of many options. Indeed, it usually does not scale to thousands of variables, unless you can incorporate some domain knowledge in a custom surrogate model. However, you have other options:\n\nSurrogate modeling with fewer variables. For example, create a few size groups instead of independent beam sizes\nA local search or evolutionary method without surrogate modeling. It can perform quite well, in particular if your finite-element model is fast enough (say less than a second)\nUsing gradient information if the finite-element solver can provide it. With it, a simple nonlinear optimization can yield good solutions with fewer calls to the solver\n\nI used to work on the blackbox optimization algorithm in LocalSolver. It's powerful and user friendly, so I suggest trying it and the local search solver. For other options and ideas, you can have a look at the blackbox optimization competition. You can find many packages for surrogate modeling and evolutionary algorithms if you look around, particularly in the machine learning community.", "Check your .htaccess file, many users are used to search domains in google search box, I have been hacked this way. \n\nOpen your .htaccess, activate line wrap and check file.\n\nIn the other hand, it's a good idea change your ftp password and then reinstall your joomla from scratch.", "I think this would be a good application of Attwood's rule #628 (apocryphal number) from StackOverflow podcast: \"if you paid your own money for that machine, it's probably not a good question for Server Fault.\".\n\nNone of the three questions you posted above fit in that bracket, if you have searched for a solution and not found one then ServerFault is a good place for your questions. I would suggest not posting them all at once.\n\nThere are no stupid questions!", "If you want to color your lines with a single gradient without combining them in to a single object you could use your lines as an opacity mask on a single solid gradient. Editing opacity masks can be a bit annoying if you're not used to working with opacity masks but it is easy enough once you get used to it.\n\n\nOpacity masks work with grayscale values, so set up your lines as you would like in grayscale. You can use a simple black to white gradient as a stroke on the lines you want to fade out.\n\n\n\n\n\nCreate the gradient that will color your lines. I used a circular path with a large stroke set to a spectrum gradient but you can use anything, a raster image, a gradient mesh etc.\n\n\n\n\n\nArrange your layers so that your lines are in a single group above your gradient.\nOpen the Transparency panel and with your lines and gradient selected click the \"Make Mask\" button, then check \"Invert Mask\" (by default, opacity masks work by showing everything that is white and hiding everything that is black, our lines are black so we want the opposite).\n\n\n\n\n\nAppreciate your now colored line-work:\n\n\n\n\nYou can edit the mask by selecting the artwork and clicking the mask thumbnail (the one on the right) in the Transparency panel to enter mask-editing mode. clicking the artwork's thumbnail (the one on the left) once you're done will exit mask-editing mode.\n\nMore info on using opacity masks in Illustrator here:\n\n\nAdobe Illustrator / How to use Opacity masks\nIllustrator Help / Use opacity masks to create transparency", "After some extensive searching, I believe that they are called Servo Erector Set (SES) brackets, from Lynxmotion, although the article itself also uses the term servo brackets.\n\n\n About the Servo Erector Set\n \n Think of the Lynxmotion series of servo\n brackets as an Erector Set for servos. These components are extremely\n versatile, making virtually any mechanical arrangement possible. It's\n now possible to build custom robots to your specifications! The\n brackets are available in black anodized aluminum. The ball bearings\n provide for precise low friction movement. The tubing, hubs and hub\n connectors are precision fit and really expand what is possible to\n build. They are made in the USA from high quality aluminum alloy. We\n also have a series of laser cut Lexan chassis, torso, and electronics\n carriers that truly complete the set. \n \n If you want to build a variety of different robots using the SES\n system, consider the complete SES V1.1 Construction Kit which contains\n everything you need to get started.\n\n\nThe article also refers to them as Hitec servo brackets. \n\n\n Hitec Servo Brackets\n \n Our selection of standard brackets can use most standard size Hitec\n analog or digital servos. The HS-3xx, 4xx, 5xx, 6xx, 54xx, 56xx, and\n 59xx servos are verified to fit. Note that servos from other\n manufacturers are not guaranteed (nor likely) to work...\n\n\nSo, the term SES may only be referring to the kit of various Hitec servo brackets.\n\nThe first place that I saw the term SES, was on the page, WALKER8 – An Octopod Project, where it is mentioned in the comment:\n\n\n I decided to go with the SES route\n\n\n\n\nThis may not be the most definitive answer, but it is the best that I could come up with. Maybe the answer is simply [Hitec] servo brackets, as the brackets were first designed to fit Hitec servos, and their derivatives. \n\nWhether or not the brackets where designed by Hitec themselves, or some other third party is not clear.\n\nIf someone else knows, or has an idea of, a better answer, please post it.", "In JavaScript/TypeScript it is custom to place the opening braces at the end of the line instead of on a new line by itself.\n\nInsert a space between control statements and the opening round brackets. (Also don't put round brackets around the expression of a return statement.)\n\nAlways use braces even when you only have one line after the statement.\n\nExample: \n\nif (str != null) {\n this.strArray.push(str);\n}\n\n\nAlways have a space between the colon and type.\n\nMethod names should start with a lower case letter, especially since you should be overriding toString.\n\nThere should be a blank line between methods.\n\n\n\nThe empty constructor is pointless and should be left out.\n\nThe Get method is not really a good idea. The fact that your string builder uses an array internally shouldn't influence the interface of the class.\n\nIf you do have a Get method like this, then you should consider emulating the signature of a regular array and return undefined instead of null, when the index is out of bounds. That actually would save you the checking of the bounds yourself:\n\nget(nIndex: number): string {\n return this.strArray[nIndex];\n}\n\n\nIn IsEmpty the expression this.strArray.length == 0 (should be a === BTW) returns a boolean, so you can return that directly:\n\nisEmpty(): boolean {\n return this.strArray.length === 0;\n}\n\n\nAlso this may not be correct way to determine an empty StringBuilder. If the array contained only empty strings, shouldn't the StringBuilder still be consider empty? But this could be covered by the next point.\n\nAppend should not only ignore null as a parameter, but also undefined and empty strings, so just do:\n\nappend(str: string): void {\n if (!str) {\n this.strArray.push(str);\n }\n}\n\n\nToArrayString doesn't seem to be a good method name. I'd suggest something like joinToString. Also there is no need to use a variable in there. \n\njoinToString(delimeter: string): string {\n return this.strArray.join(delimeter);\n}\n\n\nAnd avoid a little bit of duplicate code by having toString call ToArrayString/joinToString.\n\ntoString(): string {\n return this.joinToString(\"\");\n}", "Both have a different role and approach. So, I will say both are not comparable.\nGradient Clipping has a simple task to clip the Gradient to a certain threshold. Its job is done as soon as this is achieved, i.e. Gradient is brought to a decent level to avoid the Explosion.\nIt has no responsibility to see if learning will converge to best possible minima of Loss.\nAdam, on the other hand, is an optimizer. It came as an improvement over RMSprop. The improvement was to have the goodness of both, i.e. Momentum and RMSProp (Read this answer)\nAdam is expected to help the learning converge towards the minimum loss function when it is going in Valley or Plateau by managing both the Momentum and Coordinate specific Gradient.\nComing back to your question\n\nwhy do we need gradient clipping to solve the problem of gradient explosion when we can use Adam optimizer to do a controlled search of the space for the minima.\n\nLet's say, in the first iteration, the Model accumulate very large Gradient because of its depth. So, it will take a considerable jump when updating the weight ($\\theta$) and can land to any random coordinates in the Loss function space.\nAdam can definitely provide a brake on the Gradient, but it has few challenges -\n\nIt needs a few iterations to accumulate the $v$ to apply the brake.\nBut it is very much possible that during these iterations, the point will take any random coordinates in the space. This randomness will also cause all the coordinates to have random Gradients i.e. no relation to the last Gradient.\nThis will not let Adam do any accumulation and it will have no clue to act in a corrective manner. Everything will happen haphazardly.\n\nAlso, keep in mind, exploding Gradient has bidirectional causation, i.e. explosion causes more Gradient, and then this significant Gradient adds more to the Explosion. So, the learning reaches very quickly to NaN state.", "It's generally a good idea to add noise like this when you're using a gradient, to avoid visible banding in the gradient, especially on smartphones. Often smartphone screens claim to be 24-bit colour but the panel itself is actually only 16 or 20 bit.\n\nThe chief difference between the example and your attempt to reproduce it is that your noise is in RGB space, while the example only adds luminance noise (i.e. brightness). You could achieve this by using HSV colours and only adding to the V channel, or with RGB colours and adding the same amount to each channel.", "A proper solution would probably be some learned/statistical model, but here are some fun ideas:\n\n\nSemi-colons at the end of a line. This alone would catch a whole bunch of languages.\nParentheses directly following text with no space to separate it: myFunc()\nA dot or arrow between two words: foo.bar = ptr-&gt;val\nPresence of curly braces, brackets: while (true) { bar[i]; }\nPresence of \"comment\" syntax (/*, //, etc): /* multi-line comment */ \nUncommon characters/operators: +, *, &amp;, &amp;&amp;, |, ||, &lt;, &gt;, ==, !=, &gt;=, &lt;=, &gt;&gt;, &lt;&lt;, ::, __\nRun your syntax highlighter on the text. If it ends up highlighting some high percentage of it, it's probably code.\ncamelCase text in the post.\nnested parentheses, braces, and/or brackets.\n\n\nOne could keep track of the number of times each of these appears, and these could be used as features in a machine-learning algorithm like perceptron, the way SpamAssassin does.", "This is not a full code but more of an explanation of the logic of your program.\n\n\n when the flex sensor is triggered, a sound is played on the piezzo buzzer. The tone it makes is dependent the values received from the proximity sensor.\n\n\nFollow this logic and try to code it:\n\n1- read the flex sensor values\n\nint val = analogRead(flexPin);\n\n\n2- if it is triggered, THEN read the proximity sensor.\n\nif(val &gt; minimum) {\n int distance = analogRead(proximityPin); //this line depends on which proximity sensor you are using\n\n\n3- play the sound accordingly to the proximity sensor (still in the if loop).\n\nanalogWrite(distance);\n\n\nThis logic should work fine. If you could include more info like board, flex sensor and proximity sensor, that could help.", "The item you removed (BB-06-PSPL - 113/68) is the bottom bracket. The 113/68 means that it s 113mm spindle length and 68mm bottom bracket length this means that it is a standard size and will be easily replaced. The PSPL means that it has a Powerspline interface with the cranks, this is a Truvativ/ SRAM proprietry system so if you wish to keep the cranks you are using you would need a replacement Truvativ cartridge.\n\nIf you are willing to change the crankset as well you are not limited in any way as long as:\n\n\nThe bottom bracket is 68mm and English thread and has the same interface as your new crankset, or you could choose and external bearing set up.\nThe crankset is built for the right drive train, if you have a 9 speed rear derailleur you need a 9 speed crankset as chain widths are different.\nYou can achieve the same chain line as your current set up with a new crankset through selecting the right spindle length. (this may take a few internet searches for Shimano this is available in the Tech Docs for each crankset).", "Well, you essentially answered the question yourself.\n\n\n can I take RGB values from a few reference points (top, middle, button) of the Camera icon to deine the gradient of my icon?\n\n\nThat's exactly what you do, but for this one you don't need a middle value for this gradient.\n\nYou can make your life easier by first finding a higher resolution version of the icon. I did so by running a reverse image search with Google Images (click the camera icon in the search box).\n\nThe RGB value for the top of the gradient is #F8F8F8, the bottom is #919095. Set those as your foreground/background, apply a gradient overlay to your layer, and select the Foreground to Background gradient preset. If it comes out upside down, tick the Reverse checkbox.\n\nIf you want to re-color the gradient but have it look similar, add a Color Overlay layer effect and set the Blend Mode to something like Overlay (I usually just cycle through them to see which one looks nice)\n\nHere's what I was able to come up with:", "Judging from your comment above, you want to use only cinoptions to control the indent for square brackets. It simply wasn't possible before 7.4.355 from what I see in the source code. Click blame up top to see the tagged version, but it's going take a while to load.\n\nSince it looks like cinoptions was originally for C, C++, and Java, it only dealt with curly braces and parenthesis because square brackets are used for defining array sizes or accessing indexes in those languages－not initializing them.\n\n\n What controls the indentation of the lines between square brackets as well as the placement of the closing square bracket?\n\n\nAfter 7.4.355, it's the J option that controls the indentation, but nothing specifically for square brackets. From what I glossed over in the source, the J option only signifies that JavaScript syntax should be considered (curbuf-&gt;b_ind_js). It looks for a previous line that's terminated by a comma or opening bracket to line up with. In your fourth example, the line ends with a 1, so it doesn't increase the indentation.\n\nIf the first line in your fourth example ended with a [ or , (or both [,) the subsequent lines would increase the indent.", "The velocity is the gradient of the line on your position:time graph. If I roughly estimate the gradient by eye I get something like this:\n\n\n\nAnd the acceleration is the gradient of the velocity:time graph", "A common and free NLP solver is IPOPT. IPOPT implements an interior-point line-search filter method, a variation of the interior-point method, these interior point method uses the barrier functions you are aware of. Interior point methods are also useful for large linear systems, as the number of interior steps doesn't depend on the number of constraints. IPOPT is callable from Python.\nAs for penalty methods there is a solver called WORHP which includes one. It also has a quiet ugly Python API and could use a wrapper in a modeling language. I have started to make it accessible from JuMP but I haven't completed that.\nKKT conditions are often employed to verify the goodness of a solution. There are also solvers that work using this augmented Lagrangian algorithm such as Lancelot. I've never used Lancelot so I can't comment on it's use but it is an old solver.\nI am not aware what Projection Gradient Descent is so I can't comment on that.", "Disclaimer: I was the OP mentioned.\n\nUnless we're going to introduce the policy of closing different questions as duplicates, based on the fact that they may have a few same answers, I object to this. There are enough closing policies that it's hard to keep track of them as it is!\n\nWhen one searches for a solution, one doesn't search answers ... he searches questions that are most most similar to the problem he (or, with respect, she :) is having. Let's say, he is interested in what editors have MATLAB highlighting. Now, his search will go somewhere along the lines of MATLAB highligting or Editor highlighting. He will in most probability not search, nor visit the question What is MATLAB good for? where I've mentioned that Vim is a editor with good highlighting support for that language.\n\nCorrelation does not imply causation!\n\np.s. The questions I've mentioned are here just as examples, to illustrate the point at hard. I've no idea whether they exist, or have the hinted answers.", "This is a common problem when asking about the explanations for things that happen in a biological context. When you ask for why something happens in biology, the answer to that question depends on what, specifically, you want to know. For example, the same question, \"Why can humans see more colors than dogs?\" can be answered using a physiological mechanism (Humans can see more colors than dogs because we have an additional cone type in our eyes), or an evolutionary explanation (Humans can see more colors than dogs because our ancestors were under selective pressure to be able to identify ripe fruit). Both of these responses would be correct but they are answering from different perspectives.\n\nThe question of where the energy comes from to phosphorylate ADP is another one of these questions that can be answered in a couple of different ways. The immediate mechanism for providing this energy is the proton gradient between the intermembrane space of the mitochondria and the mitochondrial matrix in the case of Cellular Respiration and the proton gradient between the Thylakoid Lumen and the Stroma in the case of Photosynthesis. But where did the energy ultimately come from? The sun. In the case of Photosynthesis, it is energy from the sun that drives the photosystems that generate that proton gradient in the first place. In the case of your own body, you either eat a plant or eat an animal that ate a plant that got its energy from the sun in the same way, and then use the chemical energy contained in that food to sustain your own proton gradient. Either way, the energy ultimately came from the sun. It's just that the proximate (immediate) explanation is a chemical one driven by a chemiosmotic gradient maintained either by sunlight and water in the case of photosynthesis or sugar and oxygen in the case of cellular respiration.", "The \"gradient descent\" algorithm was invented before the gradient. It is described in equivalent form by Cauchy in a 3-page paper in Comptes Rendus, Méthode générale pour la résolution des systèmes d'équations simultanées (1847). Here is an English translation. A good secondary source is Cauchy and the Gradient Method by Lemaréchal, who comments:\n\n\n \"Cauchy is motivated by astronomic calculations which, as everybody knows,\n are normally very voluminous. To compute the orbit of a heavenly body, he\n wants to solve \"not the differential equations, but the [algebraic] equations rep-\n resenting the motion of this body, taking as unknowns the elements of the orbit\n themselves\". To solve a system of equations in those days, \"one ordinarily starts by reducing them to a single one by successive eliminations, to eventually solve for good the resulting equation, if possible. But it is important to observe that 1◦ in many\n cases, the elimination cannot be performed in any way; 2◦ the resulting equation\n is usually very complicated, even though the given equations are rather simple\".\n Something else is wanted.\"\n\n\nInstead of the gradient vector Cauchy simply works with the partial derivatives $X=f'_x,Y=f'_y,Z=f'_z,...$. He takes small $\\theta$, sets up the equation\n$$\\Theta=f(X-\\theta x, Y-\\theta y, Z-\\theta z,...),$$\nand, in one of the variants, recommends finding $\\theta$ from $\\Theta'_\\theta=0$.\n\n\n [...] One iteration of the gradient method is thus stated, with two variants: (2) (Armijo-type line-search) or (3) (steepest descent)... Convergence is just sloppily mentioned... Cauchy does not seem to believe that the method always finds a solution; yet, he also seems to hope it: see the excerpt of foot\n note 4. Anyway a simple picture reveals that the least-squares function in (4) may display positive local minima, playing the role of “parasitic” solutions.\n On the other hand, he seems convinced that, being decreasing, the sequence of\n u-values has to converge to a (local) minimum, or at least a stationary point.\n Thus, the above excerpt is fairly interesting, coming from a mathematician\n among the most rigorous of his century. Admittedly, Cauchy has not given\n deep thought to the problem: \"I’ll restrict myself here to outlining the principles\n underlying [my method], with the intention to come again over the same subject,\n in a paper to follow\". However, the “paper to follow” does not seem to exist.\"\n\n\nSee also related post Who invented stochastic gradient descent? on Cross Validated.", "Looking at the google search results for the term \"double-elimination game\", you and the cited article seem to be the only ones using the term. As the first people to use a term, it is upon you to define it (you could argue that the article is the first known instance of the term, so it gets to define it).\n\nHowever, the related term double-elimination tournament is well-defined across multiple sports. If you look at a number of the google search results, you'll find that almost every mentioning of double-elimination game is actually referring to a game in a double-elimination tournament. You can also refer to google ngram, which lists word usage over years, and see that \"double-elimination game\" is not even listed in that dictionary, but \"double-elimination tournament\" is widely used since about 1950.\n\nIn a double-elimination tournament, there is a top/winners and a bottom/losers bracket.\n\n\nWinners in the top bracket remain in the top bracket.\nLosers in the top bracket drop down to the bottom bracket.\nWinners in the bottom bracket remain in the bottom bracket.\nLosers in the bottom bracket drop out.\n\n\nIn the final game of a double-elimination tournament, the last remaining team of the top bracket plays against the last remaining team in the bottom bracket. Double-elimination tournaments require at the very least 4 teams, so you cannot meaningfully extend the term to a tournament with 2 teams.\n\nTherefore, it would be very confusing and misleading to use the term double-elimination game; the correct term for what you have in mind is the final game of a double-elimination tournament, or simply [tournament] finals.", "Use Marquee tool to create a line.\n\n\nUse Marquee tool to create a section above the line and fill the selection with a gradient.\n\n\nMask the layer with a vertically-reflected gradient (Opaque at the middle, transparent at the edges)\n\n\nDone!", "Randomising just b sort of works, but setting w to all zero causes severe problems with vanishing gradients, especially at the start of learning. \n\nUsing backpropagation, the gradient at the outputs of a layer L involves a sum multiplying the gradient of the inputs to layer L+1 by the weights (and not the biases) between the layers. This will be zero if the weights are all zero.\n\nA gradient of zero at L's output will further cause all earlier layers(L-1, L-2 etc all the way back to layer 1) to receive zero gradients, and thus not update either weights or bias at the update step. So the first time you run an update, it will only affect the last layer. Then the next time, it will affect the two layers closest to the output (but only marginally at the penultimate layer) and so on.\n\nA related issue is that with weights all zero, or all the same, maps all inputs, no matter how they vary, onto the same output. This also can adversely affect the gradient signal that you are using to drive learning - for a balanced data set you have a good chance of starting learning close to a local minimum in the cost function.\n\nFor deep networks especially, to fight vanishing (or exploding) gradients, you should initialise weights from a distribution that has an expected magnitude (after multiplying the inputs) and gradient magnitude that neither vanishes nor explodes. Analysis of values that work best in deep networks is how Xavier/Glorot initialisation were discovered. Without careful initialisation along these lines, deep networks take much longer to learn, or in worst cases never recover from a poor start and fail to learn effectively.\n\nPotentially to avoid these problems you could try to find a good non-zero fixed value for weights, as an alternative to Xavier initialisation, along with a good magnitude/distribution for bias initialisation. These would both vary according to size of the layer and possibly by the activation function. However, I would suspect this could suffer from other issues such sampling bias issues - there are more weights, therefore you get a better fit to desired aggregate behaviour when setting all the weight values randomly than you would for setting biases randomly.", "The only reason it might \"jump the gun\" would be this line:\n\n\n while(digitalRead(Prox_Input) == HIGH){} // waiting the sensor signal \n\n\n\nI suggest you check for a transition, that is, make sure the proximity switch has become LOW, and then wait for it to become HIGH again. So for example, if sending HIGH to the relay should make the proximity sensor read LOW, then put a loop in to make sure it does that, before proceeding.", "It sounds as though your serpentine belt is worn out or that the tensioner pulley is not doing it's job (or both). As you start the engine, there is a high draw on the battery, which power must then be replaced via the alternator. When this happens, there is a large demand put on the alternator. If the serpentine belt or tensioner are not up to the job, then the belt will squeal as it slips on the alternator. As the battery charge is brought back in line to where it's supposed be, the squealing will stop. The noise could also stop once the belt is warm enough and pliable enough to have more traction on the drive pulleys. \n\nWhich ever reason, getting the belt replaced is a good first step. The tensioner pulley may also have a \"range gauge\" on it, which will have an arrow pointing to small bracket which should be in the \"good\" operational range. If the indicator is outside of that range, it's time to replace. Other GM vehicles I've dealt with have something along this line. It would be located in part on the arm of the tensioner and in part on the base of the tensioner where it is mounted to the bracket (if it's there at all)." ]

[ "Bank One Plaza" ]

[ "the region where the bank is located", "Chicago", "the bank", "South Bank Corporation", "locations", "Location", "the location of one's duty", "the Oriental Bank Corporation", "Chicago, IL", "banking and financial corporations", "Where It's At", "locators", "U.S. Bank Center", "a bank", "downtown Chicago", "the Chicago River", "The Port of Chicago", "China Construction Bank Corporation", "Capital One", "Near North Side, Chicago", "Comilla Banking Corporation", "City of Chicago", "The One Where Dr. Ramoray Dies", "tropical location", "One Madison", "location identifier", "Chicago, Illinois area", "Capital One financial services organization", "Bank of America Building", "record locator", "downtown locations", "Edgewater, Chicago" ]

[ "Great laptop for the price.\nPerformance\nVery responsive, good price for a Intel i5 . Really fast start-up but there is a lot of bloatware to get rid of. T to he keyboard is very comfortable to type on and though it is annoying that there are no caps/number lock indicators. The touch pad takes time to get used to, yet its is very easy to use. There is no CD drive but that's easy to get over. Battery life is astounding and it pretty much last me around 6-7 hours on average with moderate use\nStyle:\nGood looking design, thin and not too heavy. The only issue is that it gets fingerprints all over it really easily. Body feels solid bu there are no upgrade covers to add parts. The screen is ok." ]

[ "Best deal for a tablet /laptop combo computer I could find as far as memory and price combo. Great to take on vacation", "Old laptop going out, thought it time to get something more current. Like the Laptop and the price was great. When I tried twice to update to Windows 8.1 it wouldn't let me. Disappointed in that.", "Very well padded case with handles. This will be great protection for your laptop, and the price was right.", "Bought to use for my laptop, which is now being employed as a desktop replacement. Now I can type on my laptop without having to open it up! Keyboard is great quality as well. Solid build, simple instructions, very low keystroke latency. Great steal for the price.", "This screen was perfect fit for my Toshiba laptop has a great picture easy replacement and great service thanks I'm very pleased with the purchase and an unbeatable price too", "Case Logic is my go-to laptop bag. Great protection, lots of storage, and good looks makes the DLC-115 a good choice, and the price is fair.", "This case lasted me about 6 months before it cracked slightly and wouldn't stay snapped to my laptop. Good price but not great quality. The bottom part is also slightly ill fitting allowing crumbs/dust/dirt to come in contact with the laptop.", "A great price! This cord not only provides AC power for my laptop, it recharges the battery as well. (Not all of them do!)", "Fit my MacBook Pro great. It has proved to be durable and is a great sleeve for the price. I have received many compliments on it. (It still fits great despite the case on my laptop).", "It arrived on time. It was a little slow getting started and it may be my equipment but I am able to connect monitors, printers, external dvd players and anything else to my laptop with a USB. Great buy for the price.", "The bag is nice and definitely a great price. Has great storage and is well constructed.\n\nHOWEVER... it doesn't fit my Toshiba Satellite C55-C5241.\n\nMy Toshiba is a standard 15.6\" laptop and you have to struggle to get the zipper closed when you put it in the case. And I mean struggle, like I'm sure I won't be keeping it because it just doesn't fit properly. This laptop es an extremely popular model, I'm not sure what laptops this case was designed to house.", "This battery fit my HDX Hp Laptop and was less than 1/3 the price that HP was asking. Great value if you need a battery.", "I use this with my laptop and a Dell 24inch IPS display. No issues whatsoever, good image quality and the cable is nice and sturdy - a great value for this price point.", "The saying is - \"You get what you pay for\". With this laptop case - you get far more than you pay for! I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of this laptop for the price. Lots of outside, as well as inside pockets & padding to protect laptop. Awesome!!!", "Very flexible and easy to adjust. Assembly was quick. Great with a laptop tray from Amazon Basics as well. Price is about the same as more well knowm compeitors, but not bad.", "Got this when my laptop needed a new Harddrive due to the age of the old harddrive. So far I have had no issues with this and it spins up fairly quickly so startup is often pretty quick. Plus for the price it makes a great replacement harddrive for laptops or even other compatable systems im sure.", "Great color! As described and exactly what I needed as I will be carrying my laptop in a backpack, and it's too big for the laptop holder. This will allow me to carry my laptop in the middle compartment without worrying about it getting bounced around. Good price and good padding. As for the smell issue...I didn't notice any. I keep it stored in the backpack when I'm not using it, and there is no odor when I open the backpack. I'm very happy with my purchase!", "It was very worth it to spend this price on a laptop table. I'm recovering from gallbladder surgery and having this was a great idea. It's quite well made, sturdy and stylish.", "Good product for the price. Kind of difficult to adjust especially if you have nails. For the price though it's convenient. My laptop is pretty heavy and large, holds it no problem and is sturdy.", "I was going to buy a Samsung Pro SSD, but this had a great price and it is working great so far, I put it inside my Dell Alienware laptop and it is booting much faster now and overall performance is faster.", "Sound is great for the price when I hooked it to my laptop. I bought them for my metal detector, if you take care of them they will last. For the price I would buy them again and recommend to anyone who needs an extra set of headphones.", "Really like this case. Good padding, great price and very convenient zipper on all three sides so it's a breeze to get the laptop in/out of my briefcase without having to handle the sleeve at all.", "I purchased these for my boyfriend along with a game system and some games. These are a great price and COMPLETELY block out my TV watching while he plays games in the same room. AMAZING! He loves them so much he wears them to listen to his phone and laptop as well! Great buy for the price and would definitely recommend!", "This cover was ideal for my son's new Macbook Pro 13.3 inch. It fit perfectly. This case is practically the same as the more expensive cases, and it seems to be of good quality. For the price, it is a great laptop cover.", "Great bag. Lots nicer than the price would have accounted for. One thing to note, I have a 13 inch MacBook Pro and with a sleeve around the laptop it does NOT fit in the bag. The bag doesn't have a ton of cushioning which makes me nervous.", "Excellent package for a great price. I had an older 100Gb Parallel ATA drive and no laptop to use it in (all now SATA). Using this enclosure lets me reuse the drive for storage. Excellent deal!", "06/11: well i have had this laptop for 5 days, haven't had time to use it to much but so far i could say:\n\n*great specs for the price\n*great screen, you cannot see yourself, full hd. I has before a 1366*768 and now 1920*1080 makes a big difference\n*windows 10 seems to be good\n*my only concern is the battery but many acer laptops come with a non removable battery. I saw a video in youtube and if i was provided wih a bettery i would be able to change it. Remember to charge your laptop fully before turning it on, read the instructions", "My wife and I make many trips with our car & van. Since 2001 The passengers always like to use our laptop to watch dvd's on + 6 hr trips, Always had to use a power inverter to power the laptop. Now this is the best solution! The price was as great as the product! It is easy to pack and always available to charge the Laptop with the car running or standing! It's better the carrying around a bunch of half charge batteries and it evens works with one of those \"Booster / Starter\" Batteries. Now we can blue tooth it to the car stereo and all listen & watch music videos!", "Great price for a Windows IR receiver and remote. I use this product to control JRiver on a laptop I use for a Home Theater PC. It was plug and play. I don't use the remote I use a Harmony Universal remote with it.", "I have been using this keyboard for a month and I really like. My plan was to stop carrying my laptop everywhere and use exclusively the iPad. I bought this keyboard to try that and not invest in a more expensive one like Logitech's in the beginning. I don't think I would buy a more expensive one!! This one works great, connects flawlessly and I can type quite well on it. With the new Office apps for iOS and this keyboard I don't miss my laptop on the road.\nGreat product and great price.", "Decent laptop. Reached out in hopes or returning the laptop to purchase a better one from the company but no response. Over all does what I want but heavy, large, keys aren't lit, overall low quality design, but worth the price tag. IMO save your money and buy a nicer computer.", "Works exactly as advertised with absolutely ZERO fight from the monitor or my Windows 8.1 laptop. My only nitpick was that my VGA cable's screws were too short to screw in, but it is VERY secure without that.\n\nGreat price, great adapter. I highly recommend it" ]

[ "South Korean managers are heading back to their factories at a complex located just north of the Demilitarized Zone. They're teaming up with North Korean workers to test-run idle assembly lines. The complex has been closed for five months because of political tensions between the two countries." ]

[ "At an industrial park where they build appliances and other products for companies from South Korea, 55,000 North Koreans typically earn about $62 each a month, a North Korea expert tells NPR. And they've got some of the best jobs in one of the world's poorest nations, Aidan Foster-Carter from Leeds University said on All Things Considered this week. Per capita income in the North is estimated to be as little as $1,000 a year. Not only is the pay at the Kaesong Industrial Complex better than elsewhere (other estimates put it as high as $100 a month), but the workers are \"reasonably well-looked after,\" Foster-Carter said. Now those jobs and what's done at the Kaesong complex are in the international spotlight. On Wednesday, North Korean authorities blocked trucks and workers coming from the South to the complex about six miles inside North Korea. As NPR's Louisa Lim told Morning Edition, North Korea's regime is skilled at \"this sort of cycle of threats\" — particularly at times, such as now, when the U.S. and South Korea are holding joint military exercises. So, along with threats to fire missiles as the South and the U.S., leader Kim Jong Un and his generals have also shown their displeasure by cutting one of the last ties between North and South — the access given to companies from the South to workers at the Kaesong complex. Experts hope the move is just the latest in decades of rhetoric from the North and that South Korean companies will have access to Kaesong again soon. Meanwhile, here's more about the complex: -- The project was launched in 2003 in the hope it would both provide much-needed income for those in the North and build better relations with the South. Work began there the next year, according to Foster-Carter. Now, reports the BBC, there are 123 companies from the South with operations in the complex. -- Along with small appliances, the companies with operations in the complex make clothing, textiles, car parts and semiconductors. About $470 million worth of goods were produced there last year, the BBC says. -- Everything made there is exported to the South. -- The South Korean government has not only given companies incentives to put operations at Kaesong, it has also made available \"political risk insurance\" to cover any losses if North-South relations sour further. -- About 800 South Koreans are at the complex most workdays. -- A \"Mr. Kim ... [who] asked that his full name not be used,\" is a manager for a South Korean sportswear company that employs about 950 North Koreans at the complex. \"The skill and labor intensity of workers at Kaesong is far better than we could get in China or Vietnam,\" he tells The Wall Street Journal. \"They're disciplined, hard workers and of course language is no problem.\"", "North Korean leader Kim Jong Un placed the city of Kaesong under lockdown after a person suspected to be infected by the coronavirus returned from South Korea. Kim declared a state of emergency and called it a \"critical situation in which the vicious virus could be said to have entered the country,\" North Korea's state news agency, KCNA, reported. Kaesong is near the border with South Korea and is about 100 miles south of the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. The state news agency reported that an individual who defected to South Korea three years ago came back across the militarized border that separates the two Koreas with symptoms that suggested COVID-19. After running several tests, health officials put the person and any contacts under quarantine, as well as those who have been in Kaesong in the last five days, state media reported. If the case is confirmed to be COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, it would be the first official case acknowledged by North Korean officials. The country has yet to report a confirmed case of COVID-19, a claim doubted by outside experts. In the early days of the coronavirus crisis, Pyongyang says, it mobilized quickly to fight for its \"national survival.\" NPR's Anthony Kuhn reported in February that North Korea closed its border and cut transport links with neighboring China, extended its quarantine period from 15 to 30 days and restricted the activities of foreign diplomatic and international organization staff in Pyongyang. Reports suggest that closing the border with China, North Korea's main trading partner, has caused economic activity to slump and prices to soar.", "This week, North Korea closed off the last avenue of economic cooperation with its rival, South Korea. Pyongyang says the closing of Kaesong — a joint North-South industrial complex — is temporary. But the move is a big symbolic blow on the Korean peninsula and a potential disaster for some of the South Korean businesses that have invested there. Take Tiger Park, for instance. The South Korean businessman is trying to salvage what he can from his clothing factory in North Korea. On Thursday, his workers drove two trucks filled with uniforms across the border and down to Park's office in Seoul. But North Korea won't allow trucks back inside Kaesong, where Park's company and about 120 others from South Korea have operations. Park expects to lose most of his inventory, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. \"More concerning and problematic than the monetary loss is the trust,\" says Park. \"The trust that we've built with our suppliers over the past 30 years is crumbling in a matter of days.\" When Park first opened his factory in Kaesong in 2007, he was full of hope. He saved money using low-wage North Korean workers and thought that, in some small way, he was helping build bridges between the two Koreas. \"I felt that through my business, I could contribute to peace and become part of a step toward the unification of our peoples,\" Park says. But in recent weeks, North Korea has threatened to attack both South Korea and the United States over tightening sanctions aimed at its nuclear weapons program. A Loss Of Trust With his inventory now held hostage, Park is concerned about the survival of his business and thinks about what could have been. \"I'm disappointed and heartbroken by the fact that the close organic relationships and the trust built between the employees from North and the South are falling apart,\" he says. When Kaesong broke ground in 2003, it seemed like a smart joint venture. North Korea got much-needed hard currency, and the capitalist South had a chance to subtly encourage economic opening in the Stalinist North. \"From a business perspective, it had unlimited potential,\" says Kang Tae Ho, who covered Kaesong from its inception for the South Korean newspaper The Hankyoreh. \"You could have said it was a gold mine, especially for some midsize businesses with a heavy reliance on labor, such as textiles.\" But Kaesong became a casualty of politics. When conservatives came to power in Seoul in 2008, they took a harder line and ended the policy of engagement with the North, which Kaesong symbolized. The next year, North Korea became angry with joint U.S.-South Korean military drills — as it did again this month — and cut off communications at Kaesong for 12 days. If the North closes Kaesong for good, the two countries won't have much to build on. \"Kaesong is all that is left,\" says John Delury, an assistant professor at Yonsei University in Seoul. \"If we lose Kaesong, we're starting the next five years of the inter-Korean relationship on an extremely bad footing.\" But Delury does see some hope. He thinks the closure of Kaesong is really a negotiating tactic — albeit a typically blunt and aggressive one. Delury believes North Korea is testing South Korea's new, conservative president, Park Geun Hye. \"They're not shutting down Kaesong,\" says Delury. \"They pulling back temporarily and essentially challenging the South Korean president to say: 'Who are you? What kind of relationship do you want?' \" South Korea on Thursday called for talks with the North to reopen the complex. Park, the clothing manufacturer, hopes the North responds. That way, at least he can retrieve all that stranded merchandise across the border and save his business. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish. MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: And I'm Melissa Block. This week, North Korea closed off the last avenue of economic cooperation with its rival, South Korea. The North says the move to shut down the Kaesong joint industrial complex is temporary. But it's still a big symbolic blow to cooperation on the Korean peninsula. As NPR's Frank Langfitt reports from Seoul, the closing is also a potential disaster for some South Korean businesses that had invested there. FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Tiger Park is trying to salvage what he can from his clothing factory in North Korea. Today, his workers drove two trucks filled with uniforms across the border and delivered them to Park's office in Seoul. But North Korea won't allow trucks back inside the near-empty Kaesong complex. Park expects to lose most of his inventory, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. TIGER PARK: (Through Translator) More concerning and problematic than the monetary loss is the trust. The trust that we've built with our suppliers over the past 30 years is crumbling in a matter of days. LANGFITT: When Park first opened his factory in Kaesong in 2007, he was full of hope. He saved money using low-wage North Korean workers. And he thought th", "North Korea's nuclear weapons program has ratcheted up diplomatic tension between Pyongyang and Seoul. But the two neighbors remain close when it comes to economic cooperation. The Gaesong Industrial Complex, run by South Korean companies but located in North Korea, has become the centerpiece of South Korea's engagement with the North.", "Upon his return from the North, a South Korean envoy says North Korean leader Kim Jong Il will talk only with the United States over North Korea's disputed nuclear program. The envoy says he had not been able to meet with the North Korean leader himself. NPR's Rob Gifford reports.", "North Korea cut a hotline with South Korea on on Wednesday and told the United Nations that conditions were ripe for a \"simmering nuclear war\" on the peninsula. \"Upon authorization of the Foreign Ministry, the DPRK [North Korea] openly informs the U.N. Security Council that the Korean Peninsula now has the conditions for a simmering nuclear war,\" a statement read. \"This is because of [provocative] moves by the U.S. and South Korean puppets.\" The North unplugged the hotline with its arch rival after cutting another earlier this month. Wednesday's announcement means the North will sever the link used to operate Kaesong, an industrial complex run jointly between the two countries as part of a nascent effort to foster cooperation. The harsh rhetoric is barely a half-octave above what has become daily fare emanating from Pyongyang in recent weeks. It comes at a time when both Pyongyang and Seoul have untested leaders. Writing in Foreign Policy, David Kang, a professor of international relations and business at the University of Southern California, and Victor Cha of the Center for Strategic and International Studies warn: \"North Korea has a penchant for testing new South Korean presidents. A new one was just inaugurated in February, and since 1992, the North has welcomed these five new leaders by disturbing the peace. Whether in the form of missile launches, submarine incursions or naval clashes, these North Korean provocations were met by each newly elected South Korean president with patience rather than pique.\"", "North Korean leader Kim Jong Il indicates that his country could return to international disarmament negotiations in July. Kim said as much in his first meeting with a top South Korean official in more than three years.", "The phrase \"tensions are rising\" has been used a lot in recent days as North Korea continues to threaten the South and the U.S. And there were new reasons Friday morning to use that phrase: -- \"North Korea Moves Missiles, South Korean Markets Roiled.\" (Reuters) -- \"Report: North Korea Loads 2 Missiles Onto Mobile Launchers.\" (Voice of America) -- \"South Korea Dispatches Aegis Warships.\" (Yonhap News) But as NPR's Bruce Auster wrote for us Thursday, \"the sky isn't falling over the Korean peninsula — yet.\" And: — North Korea doesn't have the capacity to hit the U.S. — North Korea says it has a no-first-use nuclear policy. — And, we've heard this before. Plus, there were also these reports Friday: -- \"Seoul is not considering the withdrawal of [800 or so] South Korean workers from the joint inter-Korean industrial complex in the North Korean city of Kaesong, Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said. 'When the situation requires, the withdrawal should be carried out for the safety of workers there,' the minister said in a press conference with foreign correspondents in Seoul. But for now, the conditions are not that serious, 'therefore (the government) is not considering withdrawal,' the policymaker said.\" (Yonhap News) The North has blocked trucks from the South from getting to the industrial complex for several days. -- Also, while \"North Korea asked Russia on Friday to consider evacuating staff from its embassy in Pyongyang because of increasing tension on the Korean peninsula, a spokesman for the embassy said by phone from Pyongyang.\" Still, \"Denis Samsonov said Russia was examining the request but was not planning an evacuation at this stage, and there were no outward signs of increased tension in the North Korean capital itself.\" (Reuters) Update at 9:50 a.m. ET. All Embassies Have Been Contacted, Russians Say: According to a statement on the Twitter page of Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, \"all the embassies in Pyong Yang have been offered to evacuate; we are hoping to clarify the situation.\" Update at 8:20 a.m. ET. British Diplomats Also Contacted; Calls Inquiry \"Rhetoric.\" Reuters now reports that: \"Britain said on Friday that North Korea had asked it if it intended to evacuate its embassy in Pyongyang because of rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula, but said it regarded the query as part of an anti-U.S. information campaign. \" 'We believe they have taken this step as part of their continuing rhetoric that the US poses a threat to them. We are considering next steps, including a change to our travel advice,' Britain's Foreign Office said in a statement.\"", "Relations between North and South Korea deteriorated to their worst condition in years as Pyongyang announced it would cut all ties with Seoul and expel some South Koreans working at a joint industrial park in the border city of Kaesong. The reaction came amid rising tensions after an investigative report concluded that North Korea was to blame for sinking a South Korean naval vessel in March, killing 46 sailors. South Korea on Tuesday resumed propaganda broadcasts across the North-South border. The North has threatened to fire artillery shells at South Korean loudspeakers used in the broadcasts. Pyongyang also said it will resume its own broadcasts. Reports also said the North had ordered its military on high alert and that South Korean ships and aircraft would be prohibited from passing through its territory. Restrictions On Trade, Travel In addition to taking its complaint against North Korea to the U.N. Security Council, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said Monday that his country would cut off much of its trade with the North. Lee also said North Korean merchant vessels will no longer be allowed to use a shortcut through South Korean waters, a move that would force the North Korean ships to expend more time and fuel. But analysts say the measures won't be enough to change the North's behavior. An international investigation found that the explosion of the South Korean warship Cheonan on March 26 was caused by a torpedo launched from a North Korean submarine. North Korea has denied any involvement in the sinking and said it would treat the South's retaliatory measures as an act of war. U.S. Backs South, Looks To U.N. Action The United States has fully backed its ally South Korea. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Beijing Tuesday seeking support from China on U.N. Security Council action against North Korea. She was headed later Tuesday for meetings Wednesday in Seoul. The United States maintains a deterrent force of about 28,500 troops in South Korea, a military legacy from the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an uneasy armistice. Analysts say the real danger amid the current tensions may come if North Korean ships decide to test the South Korean blockade, running the risk of provoking another conflict at sea. In what may be an effort to warn the North Koreans away from such a confrontation, the Pentagon has said the U.S. Navy would join South Korea's navy in anti-submarine-warfare exercises \"in the near future.\" Given North Korea's bellicose statements so far, it's not clear how its military would react in a confrontation at sea. \"I think everybody's trying to get the mix just right,\" says Thomas Hubbard, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea. \"To have measures that are strong enough to teach a lesson, but not so strong as to create a retaliatory cycle.\" Will Sanctions Hurt North Korea? North Korea exports minerals, such as construction sand, and some farm products to the South. The loss of that trade could amount to more than $250 million a year. That's relatively tiny by the standards of most industrial countries, but because the North is so impoverished, experts say the loss will be felt. \"That's enough to have an impact on North Korea's economy,\" says analyst Jack Pritchard, \"but it won't be a decisive impact.\" Even so, Pritchard, the president of the Korea Economic Institute in Washington, says the sanctions are \"a necessary step\" to express South Korean anger over the attack. Pritchard says the South's action leaves North Korea in a weaker position, with little trade beyond what it has with its major trading partner, China. North Korea's trade with the South was a source of foreign exchange currency, which the North then used to buy items such as fuel and machinery from China, commodities that are especially important to the North's large military. But the trade situation between the North and South has been deteriorating over the more than two years that Lee has been in office, says Charles Armstrong, director of the center for Korean studies at Columbia University. A former executive at Hyundai Corp., Lee is a conservative politician who has taken a tougher line on North Korea than several of his predecessors. Trade between the two countries fell by an estimated 10 percent last year. China Steps In Armstrong notes that China already has wide investments in North Korea, and he says it will probably take up much of the slack caused by the South Korean trade cutoff. Both China and South Korea view the North as an important source of low-cost labor. One major exception to the trade cutoff is the Kaesong industrial complex, an area in North Korea where more than a dozen South Korean companies have built or are building manufacturing plants to be staffed by North Korean workers. Activity at the Kaesong complex amounts to more than half the trade between the two countries. It's already a significant source of income for the North, where workers are believed to earn a total ", "Updated at 9:22 p.m. ET President Trump said Friday that he has ordered the Treasury Department to halt plans for \"additional large scale\" sanctions against North Korea on the same day that Pyongyang abruptly announced its withdrawal from a liaison office aimed at easing tensions with South Korea. \"It was announced today by the U.S. Treasury that additional large scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea,\" Trump said on Twitter. \"I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions!\" Trump referred to future sanctions, according to a source familiar with the matter, not Thursday's actions against two Chinese firms. The Trump administration had moved to tighten sanctions on Pyongyang for its continued efforts to build nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. The Treasury Department had slapped sanctions on the Chinese companies for illicitly shipping goods to and from North Korea, violating the current sanctions regime. In a followup to Trump's tweet, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the president \"likes Chairman Kim and he doesn't think these sanctions will be necessary.\" Trump's announcement marks the latest development indicating that the president is intervening on issues traditionally handled by officials in the Treasury and State Departments. On Thursday, the president backtracked on decades of U.S. administration policy by backing Israel's claim to sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which has been under dispute with Syria since 1967. Trump's latest tweet came hours after North Korea withdrew staff from a liaison office with South Korea that is meant to strengthen the relationship between the two countries. It was a surprise move on Friday that appears to be the latest fallout from a disappointing summit earlier this month between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. In a Friday morning meeting, North Korean officials informed their South Korean counterparts of the decision to pull out of the office at Kaesong that had served as the main point of contact between the neighbors, citing \"instruction from a superior authority,\" a likely reference to Kim. North Korean staff left the liaison office in the border town of Kaesong, North Korea, shortly thereafter. They added that Pyongyang \"will not mind the South remaining in the office,\" according to South Korea's Unification Ministry. The government in Seoul called the move \"regrettable,\" and urged the North to return soon. The inter-Korea liaison office was opened in September 2018 as a way to establish full-time, person-to-person interaction between the two Koreas. At the time, South Korean Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon announced that with the office in place, \"South and North Korea can hold face-to-face discussions 24 hours a day and every day of the year on matters concerning improving inter-Korean ties and promoting peace and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula.\" The office was created following a thawing of tensions that resulted from one-on-one meetings last year between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, followed by a summit in June between the North Korean leader and President Trump. However, a similar Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi earlier this month came to an early close amid disagreements concerning U.S. sanctions and Pyongyang's failure to denuclearize.", "Carolyn Leddy served at the State Department and on the National Security Council staff during the Bush administration, from 2003 to 2007. The top diplomats of the United States, South Korea, and Japan will meet today in Washington to discuss North Korea. Tension on the Korean peninsula has escalated considerably over the past several weeks following Pyongyang's disclosure of an indigenous uranium-enrichment facility and its subsequent artillery strikes on South Korea's Yeonpyeong island, which killed two South Korean troops and two civilians. But the public should not expect an innovative policy breakthrough to emerge from this trilateral confab. Because as numerous North Korea watchers have opined over the past few weeks, there is no foolproof solution for confronting Pyongyang's continued intransigence. The Six-Party Talks aimed at bribing North Korea to denuclearize have been an abject failure, again and again. And according to a recent United Nations report, the international community continues to neglect its responsibility to implement and enforce sanctions against Kim Jong Il and his regime. Furthermore, Pyongyang's primary diplomatic and economic patron -- China -- will be notably absent from the Washington meeting. Beijing refuses to condemn North Korea's latest provocations and even had the temerity to criticize recent U.S.-South Korea and U.S.-Japan naval exercises in the wake of the Yeonpyeong attack. Beijing's default position for resolving the situation on the Korean Peninsula remains the nonsensical Six-Party Talks. The trilateral meeting will not yield a quick fix for toppling the Kim regime. But the symbolism of the United States, South Korea, and Japan standing shoulder-to-shoulder will certainly not be lost on either Pyongyang or Beijing. After all, the combined political and military alliances of Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo serve as the bedrock of regional security and stability in the Asia-Pacific region. And governments in Australia, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Singapore, among others, count on these alliances remaining robust long after the reunification of the Korean peninsula. But expressions of solidarity and resolve against the Pyongyang regime will have only a limited impact absent accompanying measures on the part of Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo to demonstrate real willingness to deter future North Korean provocations and challenge continued Chinese indifference to Pyongyang's antics. For starters, Washington must commit to lead rather than cede international responsibility for dealing with North Korea to China. And by hosting the trilateral meeting today, the Obama administration has taken a good first step in this direction. But Washington can and must do more to demonstrate American steadfastness. U.S. intelligence remains incomplete regarding North Korea's continued weapons proliferation and other illicit activities. But rather than pocket what is known for a rainy day under the guise of protecting sources and methods, the United States should step up measures to stymie Pyongyang's activities and act decisively in cooperation with other states to seize Kim's personal financial assets. Moreover, the Obama administration should underscore that states complicit in or uncooperative with efforts to disrupt North Korea's transgressions will be held accountable. Such a statement should serve to put China on notice that there will be consequences for Beijing's continued indulgence. Seoul must finally put its money where its mouth is when it comes to Pyongyang. This necessitates that Seoul end financial support for and move expeditiously to shut down the Kaesong Industrial Complex -- a sprawling complex of manufacturing facilities operated by South Korean companies six miles north of the DMZ. Kaesong was intended to foster inter-Korean economic relations and ease tension on the peninsula. The complex employs nearly 40,000 North Korean workers. But Pyongyang pockets most of the salaries paid to the workers, and the revenue provides the Kim regime with yet another economic lifeline for its continued survival. South Korean president Lee Myung Bak has already brought a much-needed dose of pragmatism to Seoul's approach to Pyongyang, having rejected the \"Sunshine\" policy of engagement pursued by his two predecessors. But President Lee must continue to demonstrate South Korean resolve by ending Seoul's support for Kaesong and denying the Kim regime the $30 million a year in revenue it produces. And Tokyo must get serious about Japanese national-security policy. The U.S.-Japan alliance is considered by many experts to be the cornerstone of stability in East Asia. But Tokyo's oftentimes cavalier attitude and reluctance to undertake greater responsibility for the continued maintenance of the U.S.-Japan alliance threatens to undermine this bulwark of security in the region. Thus Tokyo should promptly resolve once and for all the lingering dispute over the relocation of U.S. forces from the Futenm", "The leaders of North and South Korea announced a wide range of agreements Wednesday, which they said were a major step toward peace on the Korean peninsula. But the premier pledge of denuclearization contained a big precondition: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he&#8217;d permanently dismantle his main nuclear complex only if the United States takes corresponding measures. Here & Now&#8216;s Jeremy Hobson speaks with Jean Lee (@newsjean), director of the Center for Korean History and Public Policy at the Wilson Center.", "Progress toward an agreement between the U.S. and North Korea may have slowed, but South Korea has taken another remarkable step toward linking up with the neighboring regime — by train. Last week, a South Korean train crossed the border into North Korea for the first time in a decade. It was a prelude to the two Koreas reconnecting their railways, after being separated for more than half a century. South Korea is determined to push railway development forward, despite the lack of progress on the North Korean nuclear issue. At the Dorasan Station, the last stop before the inter-Korean border, South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon on Friday saw off nearly 30 engineers and officials, as they prepared to head north. \"Through the connected railways, South and North Korea will prosper together,\" he said, \"and solidify peace on the Korean Peninsula.\" North and South Korean inspectors will cover about 1,600 miles over 18 days, surveying the state of the rails in North Korea. They will bed down in a sleeper car. Other parts of the train are stocked with bottled water and instant noodles. South Korea is pushing hard to break ground on the reconnection project by year's end. \"You will visit train stations and cross hills and rivers in North Korea that no outsiders have visited before,\" Cho told the surveyors. Hinting at what shape inspectors might find the north's railways, North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un joked at an April summit that it would be an embarrassment if South Korean President Moon Jae-in were to travel by train to his country, suggesting the ride would not be smooth or comfortable. South Korea had to apply for an exception from the United Nations committee that manages sanctions on North Korea, and the U.N. Command, which oversees security in the demilitarized zone on the countries' border. And that was just for the survey. South Koreans are aware that reconnecting the rails is unlikely to happen without progress toward denuclearization. And although North Korea's Kim has pledged to abandon his nukes, talks between Washington and Pyongyang have been stalemated. The United States apparently gave its tacit blessing to the railway survey, despite complaints that inter-Korean engagement is getting too far ahead of progress on denuclearization. For now, tourists can ride the DMZ train, a three-car tourist train, as far as Dorasan. It is decorated with words such as \"love,\" \"peace\" and \"harmony\" in several languages, pictures of animals that inhabit the demilitarized zone, including deer and cranes, and pictures of American soldiers fighting in the Korean War. The train runs on the Gyeongui Line, which was built in the early 1900s. It runs through Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and goes as far as Sinuiju, on the Yalu River, which forms the border with China. Some parts of the north have not seen a South Korean train since the peninsula was divided in 1945. Trains briefly carried supplies to Kaesong, a joint industrial zone just north of the border, in 2007, but service was suspended amid tensions the following year. The current plan is for railways running up and down the east and west coasts of the Korean Peninsula, and a line linking them in the middle. The lines would connect to others leading on to the rest of Asia and Europe. \"I look positively at the reconnection of the railways,\" says Chang Yoon-hee, a nurse's aide who rode the DMZ train to Dorasan. \"And if it happens, I want to ride this train not just to Pyongyang, but to Russia and Europe.\" The railways are part of a blueprint proposed by South Korean President Moon for economic integration between the Koreas and, in the process, to nudge the north away from its centrally planned economy toward a more market-driven one. But at a conference this week, Seoul National University economics professor Kim Byung-yeon questioned whether the proposed infrastructure projects would actually do that, or merely inject cash into the north's inefficient state-owned companies. \"If these projects are implemented, I will expect huge cost, but less efficiency,\" he commented. What North Korea lacks is \"not infrastructure, but private enterprises producing goods and services,\" he added. Economists draw parallels with Germany, whose 1990 reunification costs continue to mount — up to $1.7 trillion, by some estimates, in federal government subsidies to poorer eastern states. If that parallel wasn't obvious enough, there's actually a chunk of the Berlin Wall, sitting on the platform at the Dorasan Station. There's a clock on either side of the chunk, counting down the days, minutes and seconds to unification. Germany's is complete. Korea's has yet to begin.", "Updated at 8:45 a.m. ET Seoul has condemned its northern neighbor for what it calls the brutal killing of a South Korean fisheries official, who went missing earlier this week near the maritime border between the rival states. The move is likely to aggravate inter-Korean tensions, which have flared again, after a brief interlude of summit diplomacy in 2018 and 2019. South Korean President Moon Jae-in called the killing a \"shocking incident that cannot be tolerated for any reason.\" A statement from the South's Defense Ministry decried the \"brutal act\" and urged Pyongyang \"to provide an explanation and punish those responsible.\" Lawmakers on the South Korean legislature's National Defense Committee adopted a resolution condemning the killing. It is believed to be the first time North Korean forces have shot and killed a South Korean since 2008, when a South Korean tourist was shot dead while visiting the Mount Kumgang resort in North Korea. South Korea notified U.S. authorities and tried to contact North Korea via channels between the United Nations Command and Pyongyang on Wednesday but did not get a response as of Thursday evening local time. South Korean media report the 47-year-old man, whose name has not been released, was working on a patrol boat keeping South Korean fishers from straying across the border and watching for illegal fishing in waters near the de facto maritime border between the two Koreas in the Yellow Sea, known as the Northern Limit Line. The official's colleagues reported him missing to the South Korean Coast Guard Monday. His shoes, wallet and notebook were found aboard the patrol boat, but his phone was missing. Details of the shooting come from South Korean media, citing unnamed military officials. They say the man was found floating in North Korean waters the next day, wearing a life vest. They add that circumstantial evidence suggests he was attempting to defect to North Korea. But the man's brother told the Joongang Ilbo newspaper that he was not the sort of person who would defect. Tuesday evening, hours after his discovery, North Korean troops wearing gas masks arrived and shot the official to death, then poured oil on his body and burned it, South Korean media report. There was speculation that the move could be related to North Korean efforts to prevent the coronavirus from entering the country. The North claims not to have a single case of the virus, but experts are skeptical. After three inter-Korean summits between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in 2018 and 2019, ties have frayed, as Kim became disillusioned with the prospects for a nuclear disarmament deal with the U.S. and President Trump, and with Seoul's ability to broker an advantageous deal. More than a dozen North Korean missile and rocket test launches followed, culminating in an explosion that leveled an inter-Korean liaison office, where officials of the two countries had met, in the North Korean city of Kaesong. The move, apparently ordered by Kim Jong Un's sister, Kim Yo Jong, symbolized the violent end to efforts at détente and reconciliation. President Moon and his administration's tough rhetoric about the fisheries official's killing contrast with what Moon's critics say is his bending over backward to please Pyongyang, and silencing its detractors in the South in hopes of engaging with Pyongyang. In a videotaped speech to the U.N. General Assembly this week, Moon called for a declaration officially ending the 1950-1953 Korean War, which he claimed could open the door to denuclearization and a peace regime on the Korean peninsula. Observers have noted that previous, similar calls by Moon have been ignored by the U.S., North Korea and China, the countries that fought the war and would have to sign a declaration ending it.", "A liberal human rights lawyer born to North Korean refugees has won South Korea's presidential election with a promise to improve the economy and hold talks with the nuclear-armed North. Moon Jae-in, 64, of the Democratic Party, is a former student protester, special forces soldier and presidential aide. He has promised to add public sector jobs, engage Pyongyang in dialogue and rethink South Korea's close relations with the United States. Moon had a strong lead of more than 41 percent of the vote among a field of 13 candidates, according to unofficial exit polls conducted by South Korean media. His closest contenders — a far-right conservative and a centrist — have conceded defeat. Election officials confirmed Moon's victory early Wednesday morning local time (Tuesday afternoon ET). Moon is most closely associated with the left-wing politics of another South Korean president, Roh Moo-hyun, who served from 2003 to 2008 and committed suicide in 2009 amid a family corruption scandal. Moon was Roh's chief of staff, law partner and best friend and is expected to revive his so-called Sunshine Policy of dialogue and economic aid to North Korea. But while North Korea's burgeoning nuclear program grabs headlines abroad, many South Koreans said the election issues most important to them are domestic: sluggish economic growth, soaring youth unemployment, corruption and air pollution. Moon's victory was in a special by-election to replace former President Park Geun-hye, who was impeached late last year and removed from office in March. Last week, she went on trial in Seoul for corruption; if convicted, she could spend life in prison. The head of the country's largest conglomerate, Samsung, has also been indicted. \"I want the next president to make sure Park faces punishment,\" said accountant Kim Il-young, 26, outside a polling station Tuesday in Seoul. \"Politicians, even if they're convicted, sometimes get pardoned easily and are punished much less severely than average citizens.\" Once official results confirm his win, Moon is expected to make a victory speech in a central district of Seoul that has been the makeshift base for protesters calling for Park's ouster. Throughout his campaign, Moon has spoken figuratively of moving the base of power out of South Korea's version of the White House and into those squares where protesters gathered. While campaigning, several presidential candidates said they would consider pardoning Park, but Moon has said he refuses to do so. He lost the 2012 presidential election to Park but got support in this election from her critics, many of them younger voters. Under Moon, South Korea is expected to reach out to North Korea, but analysts warn not to expect immediate talks. \"He will push for an inter-Korean summit meeting, but this will only come after a meeting with President Trump,\" says political scientist Kim Hong-guk, a professor at South Korea's Kyonggi University. \"At this point, communication between the two Koreas is completely cut off, which is why he would focus on improving the situation and gathering momentum, such as discussing ways to reopen the Kaesong industrial complex.\" That's a joint industrial facility where tens of thousands of North and South Koreans work together just north of the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two countries. It has been closed for more than a year. Moon has proposed reopening it. North Korea, for its part, called on the eve of the South Korean election for an \"end to conflict\" between the two Koreas and the start of \"a new era of reunification.\"", "Updated at 9:30 a.m. ET The sister of North Korea's leader, Kim Yo Jong, and other high-ranking officials from Pyongyang have met with South Korea's president. Their three-day visit to South Korea marks the highest level inter-Korean contact in more than a decade. South Korea's Yonhap news agency also says Kim Yong Nam is \"the only member of the communist state's ruling family to have visited the South, at least since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.\" The delegation of 22 North Koreans traveled by private plane to the South. In the group was Kim Yong Nam, a ceremonial head of North Korea's government, and Kim Yo Jong, the first immediate member of the dynastic Kim family to set foot in South Korea since the Korean war, which ended in an armistice in 1953. After being greeted at the airport by the head of South Korea's Unification Ministry, the delegation went from Seoul to the Olympic host city of Pyeongchang by high-speed train. The dignitaries are expected to join other foreign visitors — including Vice President Mike Pence and Japan's Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe — at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. The convergence of political figures after painstaking diplomatic work by South Korea has raised the possibility of diplomatic encounters. Pence, during earlier stops on his trip to Asia, has responded to questions about a potential meeting by saying, \"We'll see.\" But he's emphasized the Trump administration's hard-line policy of sanctions and isolating the North. He also brought along a highly symbolic visitor to the Olympics opening — Fred Warmbier. He is the father of an American college student who was imprisoned in North Korea for attempting to steal a propaganda banner. He died shortly after being returned to the U.S. by North Korea in a coma. \"Whatever images may emerge against the powerful backdrop and idealism of the Olympics, North Korea has to accept change. They have to abandon their nuclear ambitions. They have to end the day of provocation and menacing,\" Pence said, during a stop to a memorial for a South Korean ship torpedoed by North Koreans in 2010, killing 46 South Korean sailors.", "Inside North Korea, a group of South Korean factories operate, employing thousands of North Korean workers. It lies just north of the demilitarized zone, and both countries benefit. Marcus Roland of the Institute of International Economics tells Scott Simon about a small island of capitalism. SCOTT SIMON, Host: And that Kaesong Industrial Park which Michael spied as he looked across the demilitarized zone is a curious island of capitalism. For the past couple of years, a dozen South Korean companies have built small factories there employing thousands of North Korean workers. Products from these factories make up a significant proportion of North Korea's meager industrial exports, and they probably won't be affected by any sanctions. Marcus Noland, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C. joins us. Thanks for being with us. Mr. MARCUS NOLAND (Institute for International Economics): Thanks for having me. SIMON: What do they make in this industrial park? Mr. NOLAND: Right now they make things like household pots and pans. The South Koreans have much more ambitious plans, however, to eventually make petrochemicals and computer chips. SIMON: Well, give us some idea of the respective interests of both the South Koreans and the North Koreans, the South Koreans in making stuff there, the North Koreans in permitting it. Mr. NOLAND: Well, the North Koreans need foreign exchange and they have had a strategy of allowing limited enclaves of this sort to develop. They have another one which is a tourist site called Mount Kumgang. And they literally fence these things off. They do not want spiritual pollution. They do not want capitalism getting into North Korea. And they certainly don't want the average North Korean person having any contact with the South Koreans. From the South Korean standpoint, there are basically two motivations. One is a political motivation. They want to encourage the transformation of North Korea into a less threatening entity and they want to encourage greater political and economic openness. The other motivation is an economic one. There are many small and medium-size South Korean enterprises that are being priced out of world markets, given wage rates in South Korea. But given access to the much cheaper labor in North Korea, they can remain competitive. So there are moving their operations to the north. SIMON: Has this done the job that North Korea wants so far, the Kaesong Industrial Park? Mr. NOLAND: The North Koreans seem to be reasonably happy with it. They're allowing it to develop. There have been a number of glitches along the way. But I think what is important for them is the fact that it remains an enclave. The amount of contact between North Koreans and South Koreans remains highly limited. Indeed, even within the zone, the South Korean factory managers are not supposed to have direct contact with the North Korean workers. They are supposed to work through North Korean intermediaries. Now, in fact that breaks down because it's simply impractical. But it suggests the degree of sensitivity the North Koreans have with respect to contact with South Koreans. SIMON: And why is it that U.N. sanctions wouldn't apply to this industrial park? Mr. NOLAND: Well, the U.N. sanctions, or at least the sanctions that are under discussion right now, are very limited in nature. They only go after certain commodities, including armaments, and they are aimed at certain North Korean factories or enterprises involved in the production of weapons of mass destruction. The Kaesong Industrial Park doesn't meet any of those criteria and it could continue to operate. Now, the South Koreans could decide to suspend this operation of their own accord independent of what the U.N. decides to do. And indeed, South Korean policy at this point is really in tatters. Right now they say they're committed to continuing the operations of the park, though some people within South Korea believe that it should be suspended. SIMON: Marcus Noland, senior fellow with the Institute for International Economics. Thank you very much. Mr. NOLAND: Thank you.", "North Korea fired a pair of medium-range ballistic missiles from its east coast into the Sea of Japan at about 6 a.m. local time, according to South Korea's military. The first missile flew about 500 miles. This follows the launch of two short-range missiles last week. A senior defense department official says neither missile was a threat to the U.S. or regional allies, but that the launches violate multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions. \"We call again on North Korea to refrain from actions that further raise tensions in the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its international commitments and obligations,\" State Department spokesman John Kirby said, in a statement. The shows of military strength by the North come as 17,000 U.S. troops and 300,000 South Korean soldiers take part in annual war games that the U.S. maintains are defensive in nature. North Korea objects to the exercises with antagonistic rhetoric and threats each year. Relations are particularly sour between North and South this year, following the North's fourth U.N.-rules-breaking nuclear test and a rocket launch widely viewed to be a ballistic missile test. South Korea shuttered the joint North-South Kaesong industrial complex last month as a unilateral reaction to the North's nuclear test. That came just before the international community slapped a new package of strict sanctions on North Korea through a United Nations Security Council resolution. The drumbeat of North Korean shows of military strength and rhetoric will likely continue in the lead-up to May, when the North's Workers Party Congress meets for the first time since 1980. NPR's Tom Bowman and Michele Kelemen contributed to this post.", "This week marks 65 years since the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea was established. Today, both sides are talking diplomatically. North Korea has also made recent moves that seem to be in cooperation with the U.S. That includes dismantling a missile test site and offering what some Americans have been waiting a long time for —returning the remains of loved ones who fought in the Korean War. There are more than 7,700 American troops who fought in the Korean War and whose bodies are unaccounted for, according to Reuters. About 5,300 of those are lost in North Korea. But the return deal could be complicated. What will it take to bring them home? What has it been like for the family members and loved ones of these soldiers? And what does North Korea want in exchange for these remains?", "Scott Snyder (@snydersas) is senior fellow for Korea studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of South Korea at the Crossroads: Autonomy and Alliance in an Era of Rival Powers. South Korean President Moon Jae-in has doubled down on efforts to prevent U.S.-North Korean negotiations from careening off course. After Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's August visit to Pyongyang was canceled, Moon sent a team of special envoys to the North Korean capital to jump-start the diplomatic process between North Korea and the United States by securing Kim Jong Un's public reaffirmation of his commitment to denuclearization. Starting Tuesday, Moon is set to meet Kim in Pyongyang to push forward inter-Korean reconciliation and help get the U.S.-North Korea dialogue back on track. As part of his talks with Kim, Moon must insist on denuclearization in coordination with the United States, even at the risk of renewed inter-Korean tension. Moon's main task in Pyongyang will be to draw North Korea into cooperation with South Korea and the United States without succumbing to North Korean calls for unity against interference from \"external forces.\" The United States has pressed, without success, for early, significant North Korean gestures as a way to ascertain North Korean seriousness of purpose regarding denuclearization. National Security Advisor John Bolton has referred to a North Korean denuclearization process that would take only one year, and Pompeo is reported to have requested that North Korea send at least 60 percent of its nuclear warheads and fissile material out of the country as evidence of commitment to denuclearization. North Korea called this approach \"gangster-like\" and appeared to reject the proposal in its entirety, following Pompeo's July 6-7 visit to Pyongyang. North Korea has emphasized the order of the items contained in the statement from the June Singapore summit between Kim and President Trump, insisting that the establishment of peace arrangements and a new U.S.-North Korea relationship must come before Pyongyang makes moves toward complete denuclearization. Pyongyang has appealed directly to Trump to fulfill his promises in Singapore and make an end-of-war declaration prior to taking steps on denuclearization. Following the Singapore summit, North Korea met its pledges on the POW/MIA issue by returning 55 caskets of remains to the United States for further identification, in addition to unilateral (and reversible) shuttering of some nuclear and missile testing facilities. But these steps have neither reduced the North Korean threat nor diminished U.S. skepticism about Kim's declared openness to eventual denuclearization. In this week's meeting with Kim, Moon will explore the possibility of linking an end-of-war declaration to a North Korean declaration of nuclear and missile facilities. But he will also face pressure from North Korea to move forward with inter-Korean cooperation, despite the ongoing impasse with the United States. Prior to the Moon-Kim summit in April in Panmunjom, Moon's administration acknowledged that a critical failure of past South Korean efforts to promote engagement with North Korea was that inter-Korean relations failed had to move in tandem with U.S.-North Korea relations to make real progress on peace and denuclearization. Moon cannot lean too far forward on inter-Korean reconciliation without repeating past mistakes and playing into Pyongyang's hands by weakening the U.S.-South Korea alliance. The Moon administration's eagerness to reopen economic exchange with North Korea risks opening a rift between Washington and Seoul. Moon envisions economic cooperation with Pyongyang as a solution to South Korean economic woes, even as the United States continues to emphasize sanctions enforcement as the primary lever by which to pressure North Korea into denuclearizing. So while Moon must bridge the U.S.-North Korea trust gap, he must also maintain U.S.-South Korea trust. The gap on sanctions has grown with revelations that South Korean companies violated U.N. sanctions by importing North Korean coal. The U.S. is suspicions that Moon's pledge to open a liaison office at Kaesong and rebuild railways in North Korea will blow a hole in the sanctions regime, leaving Kim with both economic benefits and a nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping has reopened North Korea's economic lifeline and tilted from economic coercion to geostrategic partnership with Pyongyang. This came partly in response to anxiety that a combined inter-Korean and U.S.-North Korean rapprochement, symbolized by the Singapore summit, might come at China's disadvantage. Beijing's shift in focus from denuclearization to geopolitics and the emergence of a Sino-U.S. trade war have come at Seoul's expense, at a moment when U.S.-South Korea alliance coordination is crucial. It is reasonable for Moon to take on additional risk to avert the perceived dangers of the \"fire and fury\" from a U.S.-Nort", "SEOUL — North and South Korea reconnected hotlines across the demilitarized zone Tuesday, after a nearly 14-month long disconnect. Both Pyongyang and Seoul hailed the move as a step toward healing strained ties between the rival states, although neither side suggested the move could lead to another round of summitry or progress in stalled nuclear negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington. \"We hope that inter-Korean communications are never again suspended,\" Lee Jong-joo, spokesperson for the south's Unification Ministry, in charge of inter-Korean relations, told reporters this morning, \"and that we can discuss various inter-Korean issues and implement agreements through the restored channels.\" \"Now, the whole Korean nation desires to see north-south relations recover from setbacks and stagnation as early as possible,\" added a report from the north's Korean Central News Agency. The leaders of the two Koreas, it said, \"agreed to make a big stride in restoring mutual trust and promoting reconciliation.\" The incident shed light on how the two rival states communicate across the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ. The South's Yonhap News Agency reports that there are five known hotlines between the two Koreas. They connect the two countries' leaders, militaries, spy agencies and agencies in charge of inter-Korean relations. Normally, military and inter-Korean affairs officials check in by phone each morning and afternoon. All lines were severed last year except for the line between the intelligence agencies. President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un decided to restore the links in an exchange of letters ongoing since April, South Korean Presidential Office spokesperson Park Soo-hyun told reporters. The exchange was reported earlier this month by the South's Joongang Daily newspaper. The severing of ties in June of 2020 was bitter, but also theatrical. The North blew up a liaison office in the northern city of Kaesong, which functioned as a de facto embassy, and accused the South of treacherously allowing defectors and dissidents to send anti-Pyongyang leaflets over the border into the North. Pyongyang also staged several ballistic missile tests, although it has held off on testing nuclear weapons and strategic missiles since 2017. As recently as March, Kim Jong Un's sister Kim Yo Jong maligned Moon as a \"parrot\" repeating what she called the U.S.' \"gangster-like logic.\" If North Korea watchers are not exactly gushing optimism at the revived inter-Korean communications, it's probably because they've seen too many cycles of détente and diplomacy, followed by stalemate and then military provocations by the North. Lee Ho-ryung, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, a think tank under the Ministry of National Defense in Seoul, has seen plenty of such cycles, but she believes this time is different. In addition to the combination of international sanctions and chronic food shortages with which North Korea is perpetually struggling, the coronavirus pandemic has seen its borders shut, and domestic travel drastically limited, due to anti-virus measures, and an exodus of most diplomats and international aid agencies from Pyongyang. The decision to reach out to Seoul, Lee says, is \"based on the judgment that South Korea is the only country that North Korea can reach out to and still save face.\" North Korea is of course also aware that Moon is determined to revive diplomacy with North Korea, as he seeks to cement his legacy during the final year of his five-year term of office. Lee adds that \"during the pandemic, the [North Korean] military's role has expanded throughout North Korean society.\" Soldiers have been ordered to help fight the pandemic, farm fields and build housing, she says, all to keep livelihoods and society stable. \"As a result, North Korea can no longer use strategic provocations for leverage in negotiations, as it did in 2016 and 2017.\" Her conclusion: \"Even though North Korea has restored inter-Korean communication channels, I don't think there will be any major change to their basic external policies or inter-Korean policies.\" That implies that a resumption of stalled nuclear talks with the U.S. does not appear in the cards, at least for now. Despite the Biden administration's repeated offers of dialogue without preconditions, Pyongyang appears unimpressed. \"We are not considering even the possibility of any contact with the U.S., let alone having it, which would get us nowhere, only taking up precious time,\" Foreign Minister Ri Son Gwon was quoted by state media as saying last month.", "South Korea's Red Cross announced plans Monday to send 5,000 tons of rice and other humanitarian aid to flood-stricken North Korea -- enough to feed about 200,000 victims. That would mark South Korea's first major aid shipment to North Korea since the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship in March that killed 46 sailors. Earlier Monday, the Defense Ministry's final investigation concluded a North Korean submarine fired a torpedo that sank the ship, as suspected. North Korea denies the charge. The sinking raised tensions, but there have been signs of a thaw in recent weeks. A senior U.S. envoy even expressed optimism Monday that the impasse in negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program could be resolved soon. North Korea pulled out of the disarmament talks last year to protest international criticism of its long-range rocket launch. Prospects for restarting the talks were further undermined following the warship sinking. \"I'm optimistic that at some point in the not-too-distant future we can be back engaged,\" American envoy Stephen Bosworth said during a meeting with South Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Shin Kak-soo. Bosworth was in South Korea as part of an Asian tour concerning the deadlocked negotiations, which hope to persuade the North to give up its atomic weapons ambitions in exchange for aid. The impoverished North has relied on outside food aid to feed much of its 24 million people since the mid-1990s, and experts fear the latest flooding exacerbated the North's chronic food shortage. The worsening economic situation in the North appears to be behind the recent thaw. \"North Korea is trying to resolve the difficult situation -- the flooding damage and worsening economic woes -- by improving ties with South Korea,\" said Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University. Better relations with South Korea are also seen as the first step toward the resumption of the nuclear talks, Kim said. South Korea's government is planning to send rice and cement worth an estimated $8.5 million to help North Koreans living in Sinuiju, a town near the Chinese border that was hard hit by heavy downpours last month, the South's Red Cross chief Yoo Chong-ha told reporters. Yoo said North Korea also had asked for heavy equipment but that the request was ruled out because of its size and concerns by South Korea's military. An estimated 80,000 to 90,000 people were affected by the flooding, and the 5,000 tons of rice can feed about 100,000 people for 100 days, Yoo said. The aid was expected to be delivered within a month, he said. Yoo also offered to hold talks with officials from the North on Friday at the North Korean border village of Kaesong on the possibility of a fresh round of reunions between families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War. The North had proposed the talks over the weekend. More than 20,800 separated families have been briefly reunited through face-to-face meetings or by video following a landmark inter-Korean summit in 2000. However, the program stalled a year ago as ties between the countries deteriorated. The reunion program is highly emotional for Koreans, as most applying are elderly and eager to see loved ones before they die. In other conciliatory gestures toward Seoul and Washington, the North recently freed the seven-member crew of a South Korean fishing boat and an imprisoned American during a visit by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Despite these improvements, it remains unclear whether the six-party nuclear talks will restart anytime soon because American, South Korean and Japanese officials have called on Pyongyang to come clean on the warship sinking and express a sincere willingness to disarm before the negotiations can resume. \"I would emphasize that the U.S. is not interested in talking just for the sake of talking with the North Koreans,\" Bosworth said. \"So we will be looking for indications that North Korea shares that desire and that determination.\" His trip also came amid uncertainty over whether North Korea has begun a rare Workers' Party meeting believed aimed at giving a top party job to a son of leader Kim Jong Il. South Korean intelligence chief Won Sei-hoon told a parliamentary committee Monday that he expected the meeting to take place later this week, according to the office of lawmaker Park Young-sun, who attended the closed-door briefing. NPR's Doualy Xaykaothao contributed to this report from Seoul, South Korea.", "Down a small side street in Seoul is Asia's only presidential library — dedicated to South Korea's only Nobel Peace Prize winner. In the library's theater, a film describes the life of \"a leader who melted the hatred between North and South Korea with the Sunshine Policy and held the first inter-Korean summit, Kim Dae-jung.\" It also notes that he was South Korea's first president to take office in a democratic handover of power to the opposition. Former President Kim Dae-jung and his wife live next to the library in a house with a tidy garden. He's a bit frail at 83 and bears injuries from five attempts on his life. He also spent many years in jail, under house arrest or in exile. Kim, who served as president from 1998 to 2003, is still in the news these days, and his team of secretaries is busy ushering journalists and other guests in and out of his house. Kim has had to defend his Sunshine Policy of engagement with North Korea from criticism that it propped up a rogue regime in Pyongyang and allowed it to go nuclear. As relations between North and South Korea deteriorate, the debate over whether to engage or confront the North rages on. South Korea had pursued a decade-long policy of engagement until last year. Now, the Sunshine Policy is being criticized and dismantled under the new administration. Defending Engagement With North Korea Kim was asked to deliver a eulogy at the funeral of former President Roh Moo-hyun, who committed suicide last month. But the current administration barred Kim from speaking, apparently worried that an elderly firebrand could still ignite a political blaze. Such attempts haven't stifled him. \"The Sunshine Policy has been and still is supported by the majority of South Koreans and the whole world,\" Kim says, sitting in his living room. \"It's the reason I won the Nobel Peace Prize. People are telling President Lee Myung-bak to return to the Sunshine Policy, but it isn't clear whether he will or not.\" The current president has made aid to North Korea conditional on it giving up its nuclear weapons. Tensions with North Korea have put in jeopardy joint commercial projects, such as the Kaesong industrial zone, which resulted from the inter-Korean summit. Kim says that North Korea's provocative weapons tests and rhetoric are aimed not at Seoul, but at reaching an accommodation with Washington. \"North Korea wants to become a member of the international community,\" he says. \"It wants to guarantee its security and develop its economy. If it does not achieve these aims, Pyongyang will have difficulty maintaining its legitimacy. So it may try a head-on collision with U.S. It is gambling everything, as expressed in these recent nuclear and missile tests.\" Kim Dae-jung has criticized Kim Jong Il's totalitarian rule. But he also says that in person, North Korea's leader is smarter and wittier than many give him credit for. He says Kim Jong Il is now absorbed with engineering a leadership transition, which is contributing to Pyongyang's aggressive behavior. \"Kim Jong Il's health is apparently not stable,\" he observes. \"Before anything happens, he wants to secure and clarify matters, and pass them on to his successor — hence, all the threats and blackmailing.\" Voicing Support For Anti-Government Protests Kim Dae-jung has recently spoken out in support of ongoing anti-government protests in South Korea following the suicide of former President Roh Moo-hyun. He says the protesters are dissatisfied with the current government's policies towards North Korea and a growing wealth gap. \"It's true that Korean democracy seems to be backpedaling. Some worry that our decade-old democracy may fail,\" he says. \"I'm neither too optimistic nor too pessimistic about this. I feel a sense of crisis, but I believe our nation can firmly establish democracy and overcome anti-democracy forces.\" Kim says his main task now is to speak out in public, giving interviews and lectures. He says at his age, it wouldn't be appropriate to play the role of godfather to the political opposition. Yang Sung-chul, who served as ambassador to the United States during Kim's presidency, notes that despite the rolling back of the Sunshine Policy Kim's legacy is far more intact than those of previous South Korean presidents, many of whom were exiled or jailed on corruption charges. There were allegations in 2003 that Kim's government paid North Korea to hold the 2000 summit, but Kim says an independent investigation cleared him of those politically motivated charges. \"In a way, Kim Dae-jung is the only one who has that kind of stature, knowledge, vision,\" Yang says. \"And also he has a clear vision on how to resolve the Korean question.\" MICHELE NORRIS, host: Now, we're going to hear from South Korea. Relations between North and South Korea are deteriorating. A debate is raging over whether to engage or confront the North. Until last year, South Korea had pursued a decade of engagement but that approach, the Sunshine Policy, is ", "North Korea has returned a New York University student and South Korean national who had been detained in Pyongyang since April. 21-year-old Joo Won-moon was in North Korean custody after he crossed the border from China into North Korea, hoping to help strengthen ties between the two Koreas. \"I thought some great event could happen and hopefully that event could have a good effect in the relationship between the North and the South,\" Joo told CNN in an interview in May. He was dropped off in the border village of Panmunjom at 5:30 p.m. local time Monday, according to South Korea's Unification Ministry. Upon his return, the South Korean government says it will investigate Joo for violation of the South's national security law. Joo said in North Korean televised press conferences that he hiked and crawled through two barbed wire fences to get into the rogue dictatorship, after which he was arrested by North Korean soldiers. \"I've been fed well, and I've slept well and I've been very healthy,\" he told CNN. Joo, who has permanent residency in the United States, is the fourth known South Korean national to be held by the North. Two other South Koreans arrested in December 2014 are being held on charges of spying, charges which Seoul calls \"groundless.\" NYU confirmed following Joo's arrest that he was a student at the Stern School of Business but not enrolled in classes during the spring semester.", "If North Korean leader Kim Jong Un manages detente in his summit with President Trump, it could be a prelude to opening one of the most closed economies in the world. During his trip to Singapore, Kim has hinted he might be in favor of beginning that process. North Korea's state media reported on Tuesday that Kim was impressed with the city-state's economic development, and hopes he can learn from the country. The Korean Central News Agency also reported that Kim said Singapore was \"clean and beautiful,\" while visiting the observation deck of the Marina Bay Sands hotel. Significantly, North Korea's heavily censored state media has also not shied away from showing Singapore's advanced economic development compared to North Korea's: state news agencies have been publishing photos of Kim with a backdrop of Singapore's impressive skyline, replete with modern skyscrapers. In advance of the historic summit, the first between a sitting U.S. president and leader of North Korea, American officials dangled economic support of North Korea as a carrot for Pyongyang's willingness to get rid of its nuclear arsenal. Trump has spoken of North Korea's huge \"economic potential,\" and The Wall Street Journal reports Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that if Kim agrees to denuclearization, the U.S. would be happy to share \"technology, knowledge, entrepreneurship, efforts to build systems.\" Chinese, South Korean, and some American investors might be eager for such an opportunity. Earlier this year South Korean President Moon Jae-in instructed his Cabinet to explore ways to finance inter-Korean business and trade projects. In his meeting with Kim at the Korean Demilitarized Zone, Moon gave him a USB flash drive with blueprints for economic cooperation. North and South Korea have established such joint investment and trade projects before, which were a focal point of South Korea's \"Sunshine policy\" towards North Korea between 1998 and 2008. Until 2016 more than 100 South Korean companies employed approximately 54,000 North Korean workers in the Kaesong Industrial Complex, inside North Korea. The aim of the project, launched in 2004, was to enable South Korean companies to use North Korean labor to manufacture products. The complex was shut down by the conservative administration of President Park Geun-hye. While trade and investment with North Korea might be a means for South Korea to maintain peace on the Korean peninsula, for China it is also a way to make money, and shore up its relationship with the leadership in Pyongyang. China is North Korea's historic ally, and biggest trading partner, accounting for 90 percent of trade with North Korea. Until trade restrictions were imposed on North Korea last fall, China's trade with the regime had steadily increased over the past few years. In 2011, Forbes reported that one American investor hoped to bring Coca-Cola to North Korea. More recently, NBC News said a U.S. intelligence report revealed that Kim may allow a \"Western hamburger franchise\" into the country as a sign of goodwill to the United States. Geographically, North Korea's location is a potential crossroads between South Korea and China, which both have powerful economies. Its strategic location makes North Korea ripe for the construction of infrastructure, rail, and road routes. While its economy is currently based on agriculture, it has substantial reserves of iron ore, coal, limestone and metals, and North Korea's young population, with a median age of 34, could help in its transformation. However, North Korea's unskilled workforce, and lack of a developed legal system, are just some of the significant challenges investors might face, but the country also presents tantalizing opportunities. Trump tweeted last month he believes North Korea will be a great economic and financial nation in the future, \"Kim Jong Un agrees with me on this. It will happen!\" In North Korea, CNN reports that on the day of Trump and Kim's meeting, news anchor Ri Chun Hee informed the nation that Kim had landed in Singapore, and called the summit a \"historical first\" that is \"garnering the attention and hopes of the entire world.\"", "North Korea has pledged to redeploy troops into demilitarized areas near its border with South Korea, a day after it blew up a liaison office in a provocation that has markedly increased tensions between the two arch-rivals. Pyongyang said the forces would be sent to an inter-Korean industrial park located along the western border at Kaesong, where the liaison office stood until Tuesday, as well as to Mount Kumgang, a joint tourism zone on the east coast. The zones, both of which lie just inside North Korean territory, have long been viewed as rare areas of cooperation between the two countries that might one day seed a broader détente. South Korea responded with its own harsh words on Wednesday, warning that such aggressive action could be met in kind. \"These moves thwart two decades of efforts by South and North Korea to improve inter-Korean relations and to keep peace on the Korean Peninsula. If the North actually takes such a move, it will certainly pay the price for it,\" Jeon Dong Jin, director of operations at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said. \"Regarding the current security situation, our military is closely monitoring the North Korean military moves round-the-clock and maintains a staunch readiness posture. We will continue to make efforts to manage the situation stably to prevent this from escalating into a military crisis,\" Jeon said, according to the Yonhap news agency. Pyongyang also said it would restore guard posts in the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, that were removed in 2018 during a brief period of improved relations. That followed a period of particular tension that was stoked by tit-for-tat public insults traded by President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Seoul offered to send special envoys to the North to try to reduce tensions, but leader Kim Jong Un's sister, Kim Yo Jong, rejected the overture, according to North Korean state media. Cha Du Hyeogn, a former South Korean government official and principal fellow at the Seoul-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies, says Pyongyang's campaign of pressure on the South is meant less to extract concessions, and more as \"an expression of an accumulated sense of betrayal, that they have been exploited and tricked by the South for the past two years,\" in a fruitless process of rapprochement, which did not yield the sanctions relief Pyongyang sought. South Korea's Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul, who is in charge of relations with North Korea, offered to resign Wednesday, to take responsibility for the sudden deterioration in inter-Korean ties. In recent weeks, the two sides seem to have fallen back into a familiar pattern of verbal barbs and saber-rattling. Among other things, the North has vowed to resume military exercises at the border region, which Seoul says would violate 2018 agreements intended to pull forces back from the DMZ, halt military exercises and reduce tensions. The agreement also allowed troops to de-mine parts of the DMZ, and excavate the remains of soldiers killed in the Korean War. The latest trigger for North Korea's ire appears to derive from the activity of defectors living in South Korea who have sent balloons filled with anti-Pyongyang leaflets to drop across the border. The leaflet drops — which North Korea says insult their leader's dignity and violate the 2018 Panmunjom Declaration — have been ongoing for years and Pyongyang has periodically lashed out at them. It also follows rumors of Kim's ill health after he disappeared from public view for weeks. In the interim, Kim Yo Jong, a trusted adviser, appears to be taking a more hands-on approach. She played a prominent role in the diplomacy at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, and the rounds of summitry between Pyongyang, Washington and Seoul that followed. But following an abortive (and from her brother's point of view, humiliating) Trump-Kim summit in Vietnam in 2019, Kim Yo Jong dropped from sight, only to reappear more recently among hardliners, including former spymaster Kim Yong Chol, spouting tough talk aimed at Seoul and Washington. Earlier this week, Kim Yo Jong referred to the leafleteers as \"mongrels\" and on Wednesday she verbally attacked South Korean President Moon Jae-in, accusing him of \"pro-U.S. flunkeyism\" for failing to apologize for the defectors' actions. In turn, Moon's office fired back at the younger Kim, calling her \"rude\" and \"senseless\" and warning that Seoul would no longer tolerate her indiscretions. NPR's Se Eun Gong in Seoul contributed to this report.", "North Korea blew up its joint liaison office with South Korea on Tuesday, in a dramatic and carefully planned display of rancor toward its southern neighbor. The act follows threats from Pyongyang and signals what experts believe will be more provocations to come. South Korea's Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean ties, confirmed that the liaison office was destroyed by a blast shortly before 3:00 p.m. local time. The office was established in 2018 in the Kaesong Industrial Zone, just north of the Demilitarized Zone. The liaison office appears to have been empty when it was blown up. Representatives of the South and North pulled out of the office in January, because the coronavirus pandemic. Jointly operated factories in the zone had already shut down amid tensions in 2016. Pyongyang cut all communication channels with the South last week and telegraphed Tuesday's move over the weekend. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's sister Kim Yo Jong, an increasingly prominent figure, threatened the \"complete collapse\" of the office, which she described as \"useless.\" She also warned of military action to vent \"our people's resentment\" at Seoul allowing North Korean defectors to send propaganda leaflets into the North via balloons. On Tuesday, North Korea's Korean Central News Agency said the office was destroyed in a \"terrific explosion\" because the North's \"enraged people\" were determined to \"force [the] human scum, and those who have sheltered the scum, to pay dearly for their crimes,\" referring to those sending leaflets. Seoul has often allowed the anti-North leaflets as a form of free speech in a democratic state. But the administration of President Moon Jae-in, which has pursued a policy of engagement with Pyongyang, moved to block the leafleteers by filing a criminal complaint last week and canceling the defector groups' business licenses. Seoul was not, however, indifferent to the demolition of the liaison office. \"The government makes clear that all responsibility caused by this rests totally with the North Korean side,\" the National Security Council said in a statement. \"We sternly warn that if North Korea takes steps further aggravating the situation, we will respond strongly.\" Following the collapse of nuclear negotiations at an aborted summit with President Trump in Vietnam last year, Kim repeatedly signaled that his patience with diplomacy was at an end. He declared in a New Year's speech that Pyongyang was no longer bound by a moratorium on testing nuclear weapons or strategic weapons. This year has seen a string of North Korean snubs, slights and provocations aimed at Seoul and Washington, including more than a dozen rocket and missile launches. North Korea Foreign Minister Ri Son Gwon last week dismissed the personal relationship between Trump and Kim as useless. And Kwon Jong Gun, director-general for U.S. affairs at North Korea's Foreign Ministry, suggested that unless the U.S. steered clear of inter-Korean issues, the North could make trouble for U.S. presidential elections in November. Some analysts, though, see in Pyongyang's moves elements from a well-worn playbook. \"In North Korea's way of stirring a crisis with threats of military provocations, this year isn't special,\" comments Lee Ho-ryung, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, a think tank under the Ministry of National Defense in Seoul. In 2015, for example, \"North Korea also took issue with leaflets and how they target its highest dignity,\" she says. \"The pattern is quite similar this year.\" The crisis whipped up by the North, she explains, helps distract from a lack of economic progress at home — especially this year, as the North's economy shrivels under the weight of sanctions and closure of the border with China, its main trading partner, because of the coronavirus pandemic. Lee predicts that the North will continue its provocations by undoing 2018 agreements with Seoul aimed at reducing military tensions, something Pyongyang hinted at on Tuesday. \"They could reinstall guard posts or send more troops to the DMZ region,\" Lee says. But she doubts that Pyongyang will go as far as resuming nuclear testing, as, she says, \"North Korea would want to pursue something that won't exhibit too much hostility toward the U.S. or the international community.\" NPR's Se Eun Gong in Seoul contributed to this report.", "The two Koreas have agreed in principle to talks aimed at mending their almost nonexistent relations, but they are stalled on the question of where to meet. South Korea has suggested that high-level talks take place in its capital, Seoul, but North Korea has countered that only lower-level negotiations should take place and they should be held in its border city of Kaesong. The rival Koreas have not met face to face for such negotiations since February 2011. Pyongyang on Friday says that's because \"relations have been stalemated for years and mistrust has reached the extremity.\" South Korea has not yet responded to the counterproposal, which could be a stalling tactic reminiscent of the summer of 1951, when North Korea held up talks for weeks arguing over such minutiae as the height of chair legs at the negotiating table. (More than a quarter-century later, Hanoi argued similarly over the shape of the table in an apparent effort to stall talks on ending the Vietnam War). Meanwhile, Reuters reports that North Korea on Friday reopened a Red Cross hotline with the South that was cut in March amid rising tensions on the peninsula this spring. Another hotline linking the two countries' militaries remains cut off. Some experts say North Korea is partly responding to pressure from China to tone down its rhetoric. As Reuters notes: \"North Korea's moves come ahead of a summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday in California. North Korea's actions, including its latest nuclear test in February and threats to attack South Korea and the United States, are likely to be high on the agenda. ... \"China told a North Korean delegation that visited Beijing late last month that North Korea should stop conducting nuclear tests and focus on economic development, a source with knowledge of the talks told Reuters.\"", "David Greene talks to Korea scholar Jean Lee of the Woodrow Wilson Center about North Korea's decision to release three American hostages ahead of a U.S.-North Korea summit.", "An unofficial team of nuclear weapons experts from the United States returns from a trip to North Korea, debriefing South Korean officials on their findings. The delegation inspected North Korea's nuclear development program during a five-day trip. Secretary of State Colin Powell says the United States welcomes a new round of talks to ease nuclear tensions on the Korean peninsula. Hear NPR's Rob Gifford.", "Kenneth Bae, one of two American captives released from a North Korea prison over the weekend, is back home in Washington state as his family and community celebrate his return.", "Host Madeleine Brand talks to Roger Dumars, a reporter with the South China Morning Post, about a series of historic family reunions happening in North and South Korea. Dozens of families from both countries will travel across their boarders to see relatives for the first time in fifty years. The reunions are part of number of conciliatory gestures between North and South Korea, agreed to a summit of their leaders last June." ]

[ "Gore Vidal Sassoon" ]

[ "Chicago-style pizza", "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire", "Who's the Boss?", "\"Who Shot J.R.?\"", "\"Who Let The Dogs Out\"", "The Men Who Stare at Goats", "the American Way (freedom also accepted)", "\"Who's Sorry Now?\"", "WHO (World Health Organization)", "whoa (ho also accepted)", "Honshu & Hokkaido (also, Shikoku & Kyushu)", "girls who wear glasses", "Who will guard the guards themselves?", "the woman who catches the bouquet", "Who's The Boss? and You Again?" ]

[ "Study Design.Cross-sectional observational study to investigate psychometric properties of an adapted Thai version of the refined Scoliosis Research Society-22 (SRS-22) questionnaire.Objective.To evaluate the reliability and validity of the adapted Thai version of the refined SRS-22 questionnaire.Su" ]

[ "Key words: Juvenile idiopathic scoliosis, physical therapy DOI = 10.4038/sljch.v35i3.26 Sri Lanka Journal of Child Health , 2006; 35: 99-100", "Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis treated by brace assent with The Patient Educational Therapy (PET) according to the “ARS” in 2013.", "How adolescents cope with the stress of bracing or spinal fusion surgery for idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) and how coping might impact quality of life (QOL) for this population is unknown. The primary aim of this study was thus to examine these relationships. Forty-eight adolescents participated in this cross-sectional study and completed the SRS-22r , the PedsQL , and the A-COPE during regularly scheduled orthopedic appointments. Treatment groups did not differ significantly on either dimension of coping (approach or avoidant) or on either measure of quality of life. In addition, neither dimension of coping moderated QOL. However, higher use of avoidant coping predicted lower QOL. In addition, QOL was comparable to healthy samples. These findings suggest that, in general, AIS treatment does not significantly impair QOL, but use of avoidant coping does. Therefore, coping should be assessed to ascertain whether coping skills intervention is warranted in order to improve disease-specific QOL.", "The development of structured diagnostic instruments has been an important step for research in child and adolescent psychiatry, but the adequacy of a diagnostic instrument in a given culture does not guarantee its reliability or validity in another population. The objective of the study was to describe the process of cross-cultural adaptation into Icelandic of the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children—Present and Lifetime Version (Kiddie-SADS-PL) and to test the inter-rater reliability of the adapted version. To attain cross-cultural equivalency, five important dimensions were addressed: semantic, technical, content, criterion and conceptual. The adapted Icelandic version was introduced into an inpatient clinical setting, and inter-rater reliability was estimated both at the symptom and diagnoses level, for the most frequent diagnostic categories in both international diagnostic classification systems (DSM-IV and ICD-10). The cross-cultural adaptation has provided an ...", "The present study was designed to investigate the involvement of central nervous system (CNS) in the pathogenesis of idiopathic scoliosis. Seventeen female patients with right thoracic idiopathic scoliosis (mean age = 13.36y) and ten normal controls (mean age =12.6y) entered the study. Magnetic stimulation of the brain was performed. Threshold measurements included upper (UT) and lower threshold (LT). Cortical latencies of MEPs during muscle activation were also measured.", "The assessment of curve flexibility and its geometric patterns are important parameters in the surgical decision-making process for patients with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS). Despite numerous publications in recent years evaluating and comparing different preoperative clinical techniques, there is still no consensus among surgeons as to the most appropriate technique for assessing spinal flexibility. The preoperative tests currently used in clinical practice are subjected to numerous uncertainties and are difficult, depending on the experience of the observers and on the patient’s emotional and physical conditions. In order to overcome these limitations, a mechatronic system capable of applying a controlled pure quasi-static axial load to the patient’s cervical spine has been developed and clinically evaluated. Our preliminary results suggest that the proposed SLS may be a useful tool for assessing curve flexibility.", "A fuzzy classifier approach was used to predict the progression of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS). Past studies indicate that individual indicators of AIS do not reliably predict progression. Complex indicators having improved predictive values have been developed but are unsuitable for clinical use. Based on the hypothesis that combining some common indicators with a fuzzy classifier could produce better results, we conducted a study using radiographic indicators measured from 44 moderate AIS patients. We clustered the data using a fuzzy c-means classifier and designed fuzzy rules to represent each cluster. We classified the records in the dataset using the resulting rules. This approach outperformed a binary logistic regression method and a stepwise linear regression method. Less than fifteen minutes per patient is required to measure the indicators, input the data into the system and generate results enabling its use in a clinical environment to aid in the management of AIS.", "AIM: To evaluate the effect of Feng's spinal manipulation (FSM) on adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS). METHODS: From 2001 to 2006, 62 AIS patients under conservative treatment were investigated. The age of the patients at the time of treatment ranged from 10-18 (mean 14.3±3.38) years old. The patients whose Cobb's angles were ≥10° and 39°, were randomly divided into 2 groups: Group A were treated with FSM and orthopedic shoes, and Group B were treated with traction, physical therapy and massage. RESULTS: Total effective rates of Group A and B were 93.5% and 70.9%, respectively, and there was significant statistical difference between the two groups (P0.01). CONCLUSION: The therapeutic efficacy of FSM and orthopedic shoes to AIS is better than that of physical traction and massage, and the former causes less trauma.", "The present study examined the construct, concurrent and divergent validity, and reliability of the “Taxonomy of Problematic Social Situations-Adolescent self-report version” (TOPS-A) in a sample of 128 adolescents placed in Dutch secure juvenile facilities. The instrument measures inappropriate responses of adolescents to problematic social situations at the living group. Confirmatory factor analysis of a four-factor model (inappropriate responses to situations of disadvantage, competition, accepting/giving help, and accepting authority) with a second-order factor (inappropriate responses to problematic social situations) showed an exact fit to the data, indicating construct validity of the TOPS-A. Evidence for concurrent validity was found in associations with aggression and living group climate. Divergent validity could not be reliably assessed. Cronbach’s α reliability coefficients were satisfactory. The TOPS-A is a parsimonious instrument that can be used to assess and target inappropriate responses ...", "This study aimed to examine the reliability and validity of the modified Children’s Leisure Activities Study Survey (CLASS) Chinese-version questionnaire in assessing physical activity among Hong Kong Chinese Children. Test-retest reliability was examined in 84 boys and 136 girls aged 9–12 years by comparing data from two administrations of the survey conducted one week apart. Validity was determined by comparing data from the second administration with accelerometer estimates. The results suggested that the questionnaire provided reliable and valid estimates in overall physical activity patterns in Hong Kong Chinese children. However, substantial overestimation was observed in vigorous activity.", "Purpose ::: To investigate the effects of posterior spinal fusion (PSF) and curve type on upper body movements in Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis (AIS) patients during gait.", "Key concerns about the psychometric properties of the 25-item version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) have consistently been raised in the literature. The present study aimed at examining the meaningfulness of an alternative model to the SDQ in which 7 problematic items are excluded. French-speaking parents of 262 boys and 263 girls aged 6 to 16 years completed the SDQ. Through confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs), results provided support for a new, reduced, and psychometrically sound version of the SDQ called SDQ-R that displayed good factorial validity, construct validity, reliability, and multi-group invariance across gender. Overall, the attractive features of the SDQ-R make it a promising instrument for quickly screening emotional and behavioral problems in children and adolescents.", "ObjectivesTo evaluate the clinical result of the treatment for King ⅣAdolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis(AIS) with TSRH by posterior approach and fusion to L 3.MethodsThe clinical materials and results of 9 cases of King Ⅳ AIS corrected with TSRH by posterior approach and fusion to L 3, planting two pedicle screws to L 3, were analyzed prospectively.ResultsThe average operating time was 150min, the correctional rate was 81.2%, all the cases were followed up for an average of 23 months (ranged 4 to 38 months). At the last follow up the correctional lost rate was 1.1%.There was no crankshaft phenomenon and compensatory scoliosis at the no fusional lumbar area.ConclusionFor the King Ⅳ AIS, treated with TSRH by posterior approach and fusion to L 3 can get satisfying result. Preliminary experience shows this method is feasible, effective and can utmostly reserve the lumbar vertebral motion simultaneously.", "Background/Aims: There is no tool in Persian to examine quality of life for adolescents with cerebral palsy based on their specific conditions. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the Persian version of the caregivers' report of the Quality of Life questionnaire for adolescents with cerebral palsy (CP QOL). Methods: In this psychometric measurement study, the CP QOL (caregivers' report) was translated into Persian, and then its content validity, and construct validity were examined. A convenience sample of subjects including 82 parents of adolescents with cerebral palsy (13–18 years) were recruited for this study. Then, the relationship between the participants' quality of life and their level of gross motor and hand function was assessed. Findings: Internal consistency for all the questions of the questionnaire were high (0.78–0.92). There was also a significant and weak correlation between all domains of quality of life and the adolescents' gross motor funct...", "The change in back shape after Luque segmental sublaminar instrumentation was assessed in the frontal, sagittal, and transverse planes in 61 patients with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis using the Integrated Shape Investigation System (ISIS) and standard radiographic techniques. Luque instrumentation was found to be an effective method of correcting thoracic and thoracolumbar curves in the frontal plane with a 59% and 63% respective reduction in the size of the preoperative Cobb angle. Despite the frontal plane correction, however, the ISIS scan showed that of the 40 single thoracic curves, the rib hump was reduced in only 6 patients, was unchanged in 27 patients, and was worsened slightly in 7 patients. By contrast, thoracolumbar and lumbar curves were corrected in all three planes with a significant cosmetic improvement.", "Background ::: Clinicians who assess and treat patients for scoliosis typically use parameters that are all visible from the posterior view. Radiographs assess the internal spinal deformity, but do not directly evaluate body shape, either posterior or anterior. This is problematic, as the patient is most concerned about the way they appear in the mirror. An objective set of anterior measurements is needed to help quantify the anterior asymmetry that is present in scoliosis.", "We present the validation of a translation into Danish of the Oxford ankle foot questionnaire (OxAFQ). We followed the Isis Pros guidelines for translation and pilot-tested the questionnaire on ten children and their parents. Following modifications we tested the validity of the final questionnaire on 82 children (36 boys and 45 girls) with a mean age of 11.7 years (5.5 to 16.0) and their parents. We tested the reliability (repeatability (test–retest), child–parent agreement, internal consistency), feasibility (response rate, time to completion, floor and ceiling effects) and construct validity. The generic child health questionnaire was used for comparison. We found good internal consistency for the physical and the school and play domains, but lower internal consistency for the emotional domain. Overall, good repeatability was found within children and parents as well as agreement between children and parents. The OxAFQ was fast and easy to complete, but we observed a tendency towards ceiling effects in...", "Current knowledge about the validity of the psychopathy syndrome in youth is limited largely to studies relying on parent-teacher rating scales or slight modifications of adult measures. Recently, the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV) was designed for use with adolescents. However, most studies that have used this measure examined incarcerated males and addressed only validity criteria related to antisocial behavior. We investigated the generality and construct validity of the psychopathy syndrome in an adolescent sample by assessing 115 adolescent males on probation with the PCL:YV. Reliability of measurement was high. PCL:YV ratings predicted not only antisocial behavior but also other indices of childhood psychopathology, interpersonal behaviors associated with adult psychopathy, and a lack of attachment to parents. These findings suggest that the PCL:YV identifies a syndrome in adolescence consistent with theory and research on adult males.", "To study the mechanical properties of plate-rod system for scoliosis (PRSS), a model of scoliosis and correcting clamp was built on the base of similar principle. According to the factual situation, the distribution of model centrum stress was measured by using photoelastic method and the stain of the spine was tested by strain gauges method simultaneously. The results indicated that compressive stress was formed on the convex side of scoliosis model by the effect of portrait loading. On the other hand, when PRSS was applied, compressive stress of the concave side of model centrum came to little and became tensile stress with transverse correcting loading.", "The neurocentral junction (NCJ) is a cartilaginous growth plate in the vertebra that has been implicated as a potential cause of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) since the early 1900s. Studies to date have focused on the age of closure without characterizing normal NCJ development. Using MRI, the normal development of the NCJ image can be determined and the stages preceding the disappearance of the NCJ image can be characterized. 405 NCJs from 11 pediatric patients were examined using MRI and the various images were categorized. NCJ development encompassed five stages, with a specific pattern of absence of the NCJ image noted in each vertebra and in the vertebral column as a whole. The image of the NCJ first became absent in the cervical region (age 6), then in the lumbar region (age 12) and finally in the thoracic region (age 14). These patterns of development serve as a baseline to evaluate NCJ pathology in conditions such as adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS).", "Examined reliability and validity of the parent version of the Child Symptom Inventory (CSI-4) in 247 boys between 6.0 and 10 years 11 months old referred for evaluation of behavioral and emotional problems. The CSI-4 is a behavior rating scale whose items correspond to the symptoms of disorders defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. [DSM-IV]; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Results indicated satisfactory internal consistency reliability, test-retest reliability, and temporal stability over a 4-year period for most symptom categories. CSI-4 ratings converged and diverged in a theoretically consistent pattern with respective scales of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1991a) and the Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents-Revised-Parent Version (DICA-P; Reich, Shayka, & Taibleson, 1991). Discriminant validity was established in that boys with specific DICA-P diagnoses received significantly higher corresponding CSI-4 parent symptom rati...", "Objective:To assess the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire(CERQ-C).Methods:The CERQ-C was administrated to 523 university students,and one month later,the CERQ-C was randomly readministered to a subset of the original sample(n=100).Results:The Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the total scale was 0.81 and for the nine subscales ranged from 0.48 to 0.91;The mean inter-item correlation coefficient for the CERQ-C was 0.10,and the mean inter-item correlation coefficient for the nine subscale ranged from 0.19 to 0.71.The test-retest reliability coefficient for the total scale was 0.65 and for the nine subscales ranged from0.36to 0.69;Indices of confirmatory factor analysis such as CFI(0.981)IFI(0.981)TLI(0.977)RMSEA(0.062)all meet the standard of psychometrics and supported the original CERQ-C structural hypothesis of nine factors model.Conclusion:The CERQ-C is a reliable and valid assessment of cognitive emotion regulation strategies.", "Background Environmental and genetic factors have influence on the age at menarche (AAM). Disturbance of the AAM in patients with idiopathic scoliosis (IS) were postulated [1]. Estrogen receptor genes 1 and 2 (ESR1, ESR2) single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in IS were suggested to have some association with predisposition to IS [2]. ESR SNPs were reported to have association with AAM in healthily females [3].", "A large number of studies have investigated body image and appearance-related social comparisons among college students and adolescents. However, there is no adolescent-specific instrument for measurement of body and appearance satisfaction within social context. The present study aimed to develop and validate Adolescent Comparative Body and Appearance Satisfaction Scale (ACBASS). Three studies (n = 938) were conducted to investigate validity and reliability of the scale. Finally, a 20-item scale with 4 components (physical fitness, facial appearance, physical health, and body strength) was resulted with adequate psychometric properties. This newly developed scale may be used in clinical and research settings among adolescents.", "Hypoplasia of the ischiopubic region is described in four patients. An adolescent was referred for spinal dysraphism and scoliosis, another one for bilateral aplasia of the patella and scoliosis, and finally two children were treated for congenital dislocation of the hip. The osseous malformation of the ischiopubic bones was not associated with any other intrapelvic disorders, and remained unchanged until skeletal maturity. The appearance of this extremely rare anomaly is usually reported as a syndromic constituent of a limited number of congenital malformation syndromes that can be widened to include congenital dislocation of the hip.", "In order to standardize the diagnosis and treatment of early onset scoliosis (EOS) and to improve the quality of care in dealing with the spectrum of multidisciplinary diseases, the EOS treatment guideline task force from the Chinese Association of Orthopedic Surgeons compiled this guideline. The guideline is based on epidemiological data, evidence-based literature and clinical studies, combined with recent technological advances globally. The task force have discussed and reviewed together, revised constantly and finally finalized this paper. Hopefully, the guideline will be refined in clinical practice to further improve the diagnosis and treatment of EOS in China.", "AbstractBuilding on the work of Terry and colleagues (Terry, P. C., Lane, A. M., Lane, H. J., & Keohane, L. (1999). Development and validation of a mood measure for adolescents. Journal of Sports Sciences, 17, 861–872; Terry, P. C., Lane, A. M., & Fogarty, G. J. (2003). Construct validity of the Profile of Mood States-Adolescents for use with adults. Psychology of Sport & Exercise, 4, 125–139.), the present study examined the validity and internal consistency reliability of the Chinese version of the Brunel Mood Scale (BRUMS-C) among 2,548 participants, comprising adolescent athletes (n = 520), adult athletes (n = 434), adolescent students (n = 673), and adult students (n = 921). Both adolescent and adult athletes completed the BRUMS-C before, during, or after regular training and both adolescent and adult students completed the BRUMS-C in a classroom setting. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) provided support for the factorial validity of a 23-item six-factor model, with one item removed from the hypot...", "ABSTRACT Objective: To examine some of the patients' psychological traits in relation to their levels of perfectionism and their body image, and to discover whether these differ between lingual and labial orthodontic patients. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was designed with a consecutive sample of 80 patients attending a private orthodontic office. Three questionnaires were used to assess the patients' body image and level of perfectionism. The mean age was 33 years. The men numbered 32 and the women 48. The validated Spanish version of the Psychosocial Impact of Dental Aesthetic Questionnaire (PIDAQ) was used to assess the psychosocial impact of their dental esthetics. The Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (MPS) was used to assess how perfectionist the patients were. A version of the Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire (MBSRQ) was used for assessment of their body image. Student's t-test was used to compare the means and 95% confidence intervals (P < .05), and a logisti...", "The English and Chinese versions of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) were administered to a sample of 72 bilingual respondents for the evaluation of version equivalence by a series of item analyses, reliability analyses and factor analyses. Although certain notable discrepancies were observed at the item level, the two versions were found to be comparable at the scale level. In addition, cogent evidence was provided for the relative robustness of the symptom dimensions as assessed by the two versions of the GHQ.", "Methods The x-rays (upright ap-view) of 250 patients diagnosed with “idiopathic scoliosis” were examined to determine a leg length difference of >1.0 cm. First issue: How many patients show scoliosis as a compensation mechanism of leg-length discrepancy? How many needed epiphysiodesis in differences >1.5cm. Second issue: What causes of leglength discrepancy are found and what are the therapeutic consequences? Patients with neurological findings were excluded.", "This article reviews the use of spinal cord monitoring in neuromuscular scoliosis, a condition having a higher incidence of true positive results than idiopathic scoliosis. While somatosensory cortical evoked potentials (SCEP) are unreliable, somatosensory spinal evoked potentials (SSEP) are possible to obtain in most cases and a method using an epidural electrode is described. The '50% rule' is satisfactory having good specificity and sensitivity with it rare for post-operative paralysis to have occurred undetected. The spinal cord in these cases appears to have increased susceptibility particularly during the passage of sublaminar wires with the incidence of complications reduced using modern instrumentation", "This study aimed to examine the validity and reliability of a method used for assessing myofascial trigger point using manual algometer against a digital algometer served as a standard instrument. Thirty subjects with myofascial trigger point on upper trapezius were recruited and randomly assigned to be assessed the PPT by both methods of algometry separated by 15-min of rest period. Each method was repeated 3 times with 2 min rest between repetitions. Results found that both methods had high reliability. The ICCs of the manual and digital algometries were 0.97 (95% confidence interval 0.95 to 0.99, P < 0.001) and 0.96 (95% confidence interval 0.93 to 0.98, P < 0.001) respectively. The validity of manual algometry presented by Pearson’s correlation coefficient was 0.9 (95% CI of 0.8 to 1.0 and P < 0.001). In conclusion, manual algometry has excellent reliability and high validity. Therefore, it could be used as an alternative method for assessment and follow-up evaluation in physical therapy interventions." ]

[ "Dave Blaney" ]

[ "Father", "NASCAR", "their father", "his son", "The Driver ''", "Ryan Newman", "drivers", "son of Martin", "Who", "his sons", "the driver", "Father Abram Joseph Ryan", "Kyle Busch", "the Who", "Chip Ganassi", "His Father", "driver", "Brad Keselowski", "Kevin Harvick", "Clint Bowyer", "Who Made Who", "Who?", "Father of Texas", "the father of the groom", "Kurt Busch", "Austin Dillon", "father line", "Fathers", "Chase Elliott", "Dale Earnhardt Jr.", "Adam Driver", "NASCAR Xfinity Series" ]

[ "A number of tautomeric geometries of 3-acetyl tetramic acid and 3-acetyl tetronic acid were examined using the AM1 and PM3 methods. The results are compared with experimental data and with studies using MNDO and older methods, with the conclusion that both AM1 and PM3 provide satisfactory models of the behaviour of these species." ]

[ "Abstract The tautomeric process of neutral formamide, HC(OH)NH → HCONH 2 , catalysed by one neutral molecule (H 2 O, NH 3 and HF) and by a proton-exchanged zeolite (HZ) has been studied by means of quantum chemical methods. The role of the catalyst in the tautomeric process depends on the relative acid–base character of the neutral molecule with respect to the formamide substrate. The analysis of the transition structures has allowed us to define two types of catalysis: the acidic and the basic bifunctional ones. The topological analysis of Bader “Atoms in Molecules” is performed in order to interpret the two types of catalysis.", "Abstract The 1 H and 13 C NMR spectra of a series of 3-phenyl-5- exo -methylene-substituted hydantoins were recorded and assigned unequivocally by the various methods of 1D and 2D NMR spectroscopy. Employing the NMR parameters thus obtained, the NOEs between the different protons within the molecules and the results of accompanying semiempirical (AM1 and PM3, respectively) and ab initio (3-21G∗) quantum chemical calculations, the tautomerism, the acidity, the redox potentials, the stereochemistry and the electron density distribution of the hydantoins were studied. In addition, the X-ray crystallographic structure of compound 1r is given and compared with the spectroscopic results.", "Abstract Boron difluoride complexes of 3-acyl tetramic acids have been isolated from acylation of pyrrolidine-2,4-diones with acid chlorides and boron trifluoride-etherate, or prepared from 3-acyl tetramic acids. Their deprotonation has been studied.", "The method using the trial wave function in the form of the antisymmetrized product of strictly localized geminals (APSLG) is developed on the semiempirical level. The Hamiltonian is taken in the MINDO/3 form but with resonance parameters slightly reparameterized. The equilibrium geometries and heats of formation of a series of organic compounds are calculated in its framework and compared with the experimental data and results of the SCF-MINDO/3 approach. Two different schemes of calculation of the ionization potentials are developed and thoroughly tested. The O(N)-scalability and acceptable accuracy are proven for the proposed APSLG-MINDO/3 method.", "The existence of ring-chain tautomerism between a cyclic semiketal form and an open-chain δ-ketol form of the product of the reduction of dubinidinone has been shown unambiguously by13C NMR spectroscopy, and this has been confirmed by the results of PMR spectroscopy. It has been shown that in the solution in deuteropyridine and deuterodimethyl sulfoxide the tautomeric equilibrium is shifted in the direction of the formation of the cyclic semiketal, while in trifluoroacetic acid it is shifted in the direction of the open-chain δ-ketol. Analysis of the IR spectrum has shown that the product of the reduction of dubinidinone exists predominantly in the cyclic semiketal form in the crystalline state.", "Abstract Dimethyl dihydro-1,2,4,5-tetrazine-3,6-dicarboxylate can exist either in 1,2- or 1,4-dihydro tautomeric forms. The 15 N NMR spectra of dimethyl dihydro-1,2,4,5-tetrazine-3,6-dicarboxylate were measured at the 15 N natural abundance level as well as in 15 N doubly labelled selectively and in 15 N completely labelled compounds (20% 15 N). The J ( 15 N, 15 N) value was determined in 15 N completely labelled compounds (20% 15 N) using 1D 15 N INADEQUATE and was found to be 12.2 ± 0.2 Hz in deuteriochloroform, acetonitrile- d 3 , DMSO- d 6 and CD 3 OH. Very similar 15 N chemical shifts and 1 J ( 15 N, 1 H) values were also observed in all the solvents. This indicates that compound 1 exists completely in the 1,4-dihydro tautomeric form (i.e., as dimethyl 1,4-dihydro-1,2,4,5-tetrazine-3,6-dicarboxylate) in all the solvents tested.", "The structures of conformers and tautomers of 2,4,6-pyrimidinetrione (barbituric acid), as well as those of their anions, dianions and the trianion (17 species in all) have been studied by HF and B3LYP 6-31 + G (d,p) quantum chemical calculations. The most stable among the molecular tautomers is the triketo form, followed by the 6-hydroxy tautomer, in full agreement with the experimental data on the tautomeric equilibrium. The theoretical deprotonation energy of barbituric acid amounting to 1345.24 kJ.mol - 1 corresponds to a moderately strong C-H acid, in agreement with the literature experimental value pKa 1 = 8.4 (solvent dimethyl sulfoxide). The calculated structural changes, caused by the molecule→anion conversion, agree well with those found both by XRD and neutron diffraction. The corresponding structural changes, accompanying the anion-dianion and dianion→trianion conversions, have also been studied by the same computational methods.", "In order to expand the structure–activity relationship of tetramic acid molecules with structural similarity to the antibiotic reutericyclin, 22 compounds were synthesized and tested against a panel of clinically relevant bacteria. Key structural changes on the tetramic acid core affected antibacterial activity. Various compounds in the N-alkyl 3-acetyltetramic acid series exhibited good activity against Gram-positive bacterial pathogens including Bacillus anthracis, Propionibacterium acnes, Enterococcus faecalis, and both Methicillin-sensitive and -resistant Staphylococcus aureus.", "On the basis of the second-order Jahn-Teller effect and SCF MO method, we have examined the geometrical structures with respect to bond length and the ground-state multiplicity and stability of peri-condensed tetracyclic nonbenzenoid aromatic hydrocarbons. It was found that of the molecules examined, dibenzo[cd, gh]pentalene (III) and its seven-membered analogue (IV) should have a triplet ground-state, exhibiting no appreciable double-bond fixation in the peripheral carbon skeleton. The other molecules were predicted to suffer the first-order or second-order bond distortions, showing a more or less marked double-bond fixation. The electronic spectra were calculated using the bond distances obtained on the basis of SCF MO method.", "Semiempirical MO calculations show that the π* orbital of the carbonyl carbon of asymmetric ketones deviates from orthogonality. These small deviations, measured by twist angles, are used to predic...", "The mechanism of the title reaction is found to consist of three steps by DFT calculations: (1) N(2) dissociation, (2) intramolecular Ag-carbene addition, and (3) proton transfer. The N(2) dissociation is turnover determining. The product 3-alkylideneoxindole is favored in tautomerization with 3-acetyl-2-hydroxyindole.", "1 ::: H and 13C n.m.r. studies have proved that ethyl 9-dimethylaminomethylene-4-oxo-6,7,8,9-tetrahydro-4H-pyrido[1,2-a]pyrimidine-3-carboxylates (2)–(5) and the corresponding pyrrolo homologue (6) exist in the form of E-isomers whereas the azepino[1,2-a]pyrimidine derivative (7) appears as an equilibrium mixture of Z-and E-isomers. On the basis of 15N chemical shifts an analogous tautomeric structure has been established for the 9-dimethylaminomethylene derivatives (2)–(7) and the ethyl 9-arylaminomethylene-4-oxo-6,7,8,9-tetrahydro-4H-pyrido[1,2-a]pyrimidine-3-carboxylates (8)–(12) as well. 15N Shifts were sensitively affected by the Z–E isomerism and structural changes in remote parts of the molecule, too. Protonation of compounds (2)–(12) takes place on the N(1) atom, forming a 1,6,7,8-tetrahydro structure.", "Abstract An ab initio self-consistent-field molecular-orbital procedure has been used to compute structures and energies of o -nitrotoluene, o -nitroaniline and some of their possible rearrangement products at the 3-21G level. o -Nitrotoluene and o -nitroaniline have been taken as model systems for their highly energetic 2,4,6-trinitro analogs. Our results for o -nitrotoluene show that intramolecular hydrogen transfer to form a bicyclic tautomer is highly favored thermodynamically, as is the further loss of water to form anthranil. However, tautomerization of o -nitroaniline to a nitronic acid is found to be thermodynamically unfavorable, while its conversion to benzofurazan and water is calculated to be thermochemically nearly neutral. We suggest that the contrasting energetics of these reaction sequences of o -nitrotoluene and o -nitroaniline help to explain the differences in the thermal, shock and impact sensitivities of their larger trinitroaromatic analogs.", "The present invention relates to novel compounds of formula (I) (W, X, Y, Z , A, B, D, Q 1, Q 2 and G have the meanings indicated in the specification.), A plurality of methods and intermediate products for this preparation, pesticides and / or their use as herbicides and / or fungicides, and 3'-alkoxy-spiro cyclopentyl of formulas (I) - select comprising compounds to improve the substituted tetramic acid and tetronic acid and at least one tolerance of the plants on herbicides. Also disclosed is, by addition of ammonium salts and / or phosphonium salts or by adding ammonium salts or phosphonium salts and penetration enhancers, formula (I) 3'alkoxy spiro cyclopentyl - substituted tetramine acid and method of increasing the effect of the crop protection products containing drug class of tetronic acid, the corresponding drug, these production methods, as well as their use in crop protection.", "The conserved pterin dithiolene ligand that coordinates molybdenum (Mo) in the cofactor (Moco) of mononuclear Mo enzymes can exist in both a tricyclic pyranopterin dithiolene form and as a bicyclic pterin–dithiolene form as observed in protein crystal structures of several bacterial molybdoenzymes. Interconversion between the tricyclic and bicyclic forms via pyran scission and cyclization has been hypothesized to play a role in the catalytic mechanism of Moco. Therefore, understanding the interconversion between the tricyclic and bicyclic forms, a type of ring–chain tautomerism, is an important aspect of study to understand its role in catalysis. In this study, equilibrium constants (Keq) as well as enthalpy, entropy, and free energy values are obtained for pyran ring tautomerism exhibited by two Moco model complexes, namely, (Et4N)[Tp*Mo(O)(S2BMOPP)] (1) and (Et4N)[Tp*Mo(O)(S2PEOPP)] (2), as a solvent-dependent equilibrium process. Keq values obtained from 1H NMR data in seven deuterated solvents show a ...", "On the basis of the second-order Jahn-Teller theory and the semiempirical SCF MO method, the ground states of both corannulene and icosahedral C60 are predicted not to undergo any bond distortions accompanied with molecular-symmetry reductions. The π-type electronic spectra for corannulene calculated by using the energetically most favorable geometrical structures obtained by the SCF MO method are in good agreement with experimental data.", "The biphenacyl benzotriazolium salts 12 give a tautomeric equilibrium 1314 in the presence of triethyl- amine (TEA) or NaOH. The evaluation of this tautomeric equilibrium has been studied using a dynamic NMR analysis and a new synthetic procedure of disubstituted benzotriazolium ylides 15 and 16, which have in their structures a picryl fragment. This study also includes a theoretical analysis on the reactivity of salts 12a-c and the thermodyna- mical stability of tautomeric forms 13 and 14 by AM1 and PM3 procedure methods.", "Abstract C8H6N2O6, orthorhombic, Pnma (no. 62), a = 6.4261(7) Å, b = 17.080(2) Å, c = 8.5393(10) Å, V = 937.2(2) Å3, Z = 4, Rgt(F) = 0.0444, wRref(F2) = 0.0977, T = 173(2) K.", "Two variants are discussed of the synthesis of 1-R-4-hydroxy-2-oxo-1,2-dihydroquinoline-3-carboxylic acid β-N-tosylhydrazides which undergo a McFayden-Stevens reaction to give 1-R-4-hydroxy-2-oxo-1,2-dihydroquinoline-3-carbaldehydes in high yields. It was shown that the thiosemicarbazones prepared from them exist in the solid state exclusively in the syn-form while in solution a hydrazone ↔ enhydrazine tautomerism is observed. The results of a study of the antitubercular activity of the synthesized compounds are reported.", "The semiempirical, SCF–MO theory, using the approximation of CNDO is parameterized for the prediction of potential surfaces for both open and closed shell molecules and ions. It is designated CNDO/BW. Empirical examination of the importance of core repulsion leads to the introduction of an expression for the core repulsion energy which results in the simultaneous prediction of relatively good equilibrium geometries and bonding energies for a variety of molecules. The importance of several of the CNDO parameters is examined in this context.", "We have already shown by CD and NMR techniques that the terminally protected homo-octapeptides Z (and Ac)-[L-(alphaMe)Val](8)-OtBu undergo a slow and irreversible 3(10)-helix to alpha-helix transition when dissolved in 1,1,1,3,3,3-hexafluoroisopropanol. In the present work, we find by HPLC and CD that under the aforementioned experimental conditions, a slow acidolysis of the tert-butyl ester functionality does take place affording the corresponding octapeptide free acids. The results of our combined chromatographic and spectroscopic experiments are confirmed by a comparison with the properties of independently synthesized and chemically characterized authentic compounds.", "Abstract C16H10N2O4S1Cd, orthorhombic, P2(1)2(1)2(1), a = 8.977(2) Å, b = 11.751(3) Å, c = 14.224(4) Å, α = 90°, β = 90°, γ = 90°, V = 1500.6(6) Å3, Z = 4, Rgt(F) = 0.0188, wRref(F2) = 0.0431, T = 296(2) K.", "Facile and versatile access to highly functionalized tetronic acids has been successfully achieved through the reaction of conjugated ynones with carbon dioxide. In the presence of a base, the enolates generated from the ynones capture CO2 via a carbon-carbon bond-forming reaction, accompanied by a 5-exo-dig cyclization reaction of the resulting carboxylate to the alkyne, activated by a silver catalyst. The present method should be applicable to the synthesis of a wide variety of tetronic acids.", "Tautomerism of some nitriles has been studied by mass spectrometry. The analysis of the corresponding mass spectra has allowed some fragmentations to specific tautomers to be assigned and the heats of tautomerization to be determined through temperature effects and electron energy studies. Experimental determinations are supported by theoretical calculations. The joint analysis of mass spectrometry and DFT-B3LYP data indicate that this tautomeric equilibrium can be studied by the experimental spectrometric strategy employed.", "Abstract A spectrophotometric study of the reaction of the alkaline hydrolysis of triflusal (TFL) and acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) in the presence of zwitterionic micelles was carried out, with the objective of determining the effects of the hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions on the micellar union of both drugs. A series of zwitterionic surfactants of alkyldimethylammonio propanesulfonate (SB3-n) were used: decyldimethylammonio propanesulfonate (SB3-10), tetradecyldimethylammonio propanesulfonate (SB3-14), hexadecyldimethylammonio propanesulfonate (SB3-16). This reaction is inhibited at higher surfactant concentrations. The experimental data has been processed according to the micellar pseudophase model. The values of the binding constants of both drugs in the micelle (KS) determine the importance of the hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions in the micelle solubilization of both drugs.", "The molecular geometries of four tautomers of 6-thioguanine (6TG) were studied using ab initio LCAO-MO method at the Hartree-Fock level. All considered species are minimum structures on the 3-21G ≡ 8 potential energy surface (PES) of 6TG as determined from harmonic vibrational frequencies calculations carried out at the same level. The basis set effects on the relative energies of the tautomers and their one-electron properties were studied at the HF/6-31G ≡ 8, HF/6-31G ≡ 8 ≡ 8, and HF/6-311G ≡ 8 ≡ 8 levels. Our best estimation of the relative stabilities of the tautomers includes electron-correlation contributions calculated at the MP2/6-31G ≡ 8 approximation and the zero-point energy contributions scaled by 0.9", "Abstract The conformational analysis of six tripodal caffeic acid derivatives is obtained through semiempirical (AM1 and PM3) and Density Functional Theory (B3LYP/DZVP2, in this case) calculations. It was found that structures with small tripodal sides ( n = 1) are mainly stabilized by π electron delocalization. In contrast, intramolecular hydrogen bonds play a very important role in the stabilization of structures with larger tripodal sides ( n = 2), where hydrogen bonds restrain the degrees of freedom of the structure. It was also found that another important aspect in the conformational search is the symmetry ( C 3 , in this case), since symmetrical structures were energetically preferred to those that are not symmetrical.", "The spectral characteristics of the 1-methyl-2-(4-methoxyphenyl)-3-hydroxy-4(1H)-quinolone (QMOM) dye with dual fluorescence in acetonitrile were studied under selective excitation in a wide temperature range. This dye is a structural analog of 3-hydroxyflavone and exhibits excited-state proton transfer, which forms a fluorescent tautomeric form, while the solution is characterized by dual fluorescence. The thermal behavior of the relative band intensities revealed the kinetic character of the proton transfer. The third form showed itself as a maximum between the bands of the normal and tautomeric forms upon excitation in several regions of the absorption spectrum and became dominant in solution at 60–80°C. The characteristics of the third form were studied. Additional experiments showed that this was possibly the anionic form of the dye.", "Incubation of mature sweet corn kernels of Zea mays in dilute solutions of (14)C-labeled indole-3-acetic acid leads to the formation of (14)C-labeled esters of myo-inositol, glucose, and glucans. Utilizing this knowledge it was found that an enzyme preparation from immature sweet corn kernels of Zea mays catalyzed the CoA- and ATP-dependent esterification of indole-3-acetic acid to myo-inositol and glucose. The esters formed were 2-O-(indole-3-acetyl)-myo-inositol, 1-dl-1-O-(indole-3-acetyl)-myo-inositol, di-O-(indole-3-acetyl)-myo-inositol, tri-O-(indole-3-acetyl)-myo-inositol, 2-O-(indole-3-acetyl)-d-glucopyranose, 4-O-(indole-3-acetyl)-d-glucopyranose and 6-O-(indole-3-acetyl)-d-glycopyranose. An assay system was developed for measuring esterification of (14)C-labeled indole-3-acetic acid by ammonolysis of the esters followed by isolation and counting the radioactive indole-3-acetamide.", "Abstract The formation of the ternary complexes of Vanadium (III)- l -cysteine with the amino acids serine (HSer), threonine (HThr), methionine (HMet) and phenylalanine (HPhe) in aqueous solution was studied by means of emf(H) electromotive force measurements under the conditions: 3.0 M KCl and temperature (25.0 ± 0.1) °C, in order to know the speciation of these systems. The data obtained through potentiometric measurements were analyzed using the computer program generalized least squares LETAGROP, which indicate the formation of ternary complexes of the type [V(Cys)(HL)]+, V(Cys)(L) and the hydrolysis products [V(Cys)(L)(OH)]− and [V(Cys)(L)(OH)2]2 −, where L represents the amino acids studied (L = Ser, Thr, Met, Phe ). The spectrophotometric studies indicate the presence of six-coordinated and heptacoordinated complexes for the V(III)-H2Cys-HThr system. The Δ log K″ indicated that the ternary complexes are more stable than the binary ones.", "GENERAL compounds of formula (I), and their tautomers HAVE ANTIVIRIASICAS properties. In formula (I) R1 represents halogen, C1-C4 alkyl, halo (C1-C4) O C2-4 alkanoyl, R2 hydrogen, hydroxy, C1-4alkoxy, TIOALQUILOC1-4 or phenyl- (Alkoxy C1-4) OR IF that X is oxygen can also be acyloxy, R3 is hydrogen or alkyl C1-4, R4 is a carbocyclic or heterocyclic group, R5 is hydrogen or fluorine, M = 0,1 or 2, X oxygen or NH, Y is a direct bond -CH = CH-, -C = CO a group of formula (Z) NA- (A) wherein A is a C1-8 alkylene which may be substituted by one or two phenyl groups, Z is oxygen, sulfur, SO or SO2 and n is 0 or 1 with the proviso that R1 is different from (I), when R2 represents hydrogen, hydroxy or benzoyloxy, R3 is hydrogen, R4 unsubstituted phenyl, R5 hydrogen, F, O, X, EY SULFUR a direct bond. KNOWN AND PREPARE FOR conventional methods.", "The reactions of dimethyl acetylenedicarboxylate (V) with p-chloroaniline, ethanolamine, ethylenediamine, o-aminophenol, and o-phenylenediamine gave dimethyl N-(p-chlorophenyl)aminofumarate(VI), 3-methoxycarbonylmethylene-3,4,5,6,-tetrahydro-2H-1,4-oxazin-2-one (VII), 3-methoxycarbonylmethylenepiperazin-2-one (VIII), 3-methoxycarbonylmethylene-3,4,-dihydro-2H-1,4-benzoxazine-2-one(IX), and 3-methoxycarbonylmethylene-3,4-dihydro-2(1H)-quinoxalinone(X), respectively. It has been shown that methoxycarbonylmethylene is a common structural element in all products, where the carbonyl is hydrogen-bonded with an amino group to form an enamine form. The spectra measured for crystals (IR) and for solutions in inert solvents (NMR) exhibited the fixation of the enamine form preferentially to the imine form, while NMR spectra for trifluoroacetic acid solutions indicated both forms in equilibrium. Tautomerization occurring in the acid is discussed." ]

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[ "Monero's fees are not dependent on price. They are based on the size of the transaction (minimum 0.002 Monero per kB, rounded up).\n\nThere is some research going on about making the fees dynamic, based on directly observable quantities such as transaction rate, but this isn't anything firm yet.\n\nMonero price is inherently foreign from the blockchain, and as such it is difficult to have an automated consensus system which takes it into account. It may be vulnerable to Sybil attacks, and attackers paying miners to lie about the current exchange rate.\n\nFor at least the near future, fees are expected to be changed \"manually\" by the dev team, if the price of Monero stays for enough time at a level which makes transaction fees too expensive, or too cheap (yes, it's pretty subjective, and it will be that way until a non gameable automated way is worked out)." ]

[ "Do Monero and ZCash have different transaction fees?\n\n\nThis is largely going to depend on the price, which is currently unknown because Zcash hasn't launched yet. However, on testnet the fee seems to be approximately 0.00005 TAZ (Zcash tesnet coins) per kB, whereas Monero currnetly has a fee of 0.002 XMR per kB. \n\nA more interesting comparison is transaction sizes. The average transaction size for Monero is currently approximately 1 to 3 kB. By contrast, the anonymous Zcash transactions seem to be approximately 2 kB, according to one of their engineers, namely Sean Bowe.\n\n\n Do Monero and ZCash have different mining algorithms?\n\n\nYes. Monero uses CryptoNight as PoW algorithm, whereas Zcash uses Equihash as PoW algorithm. Both are aiming for ASIC resistance. However, one could argue that the CryptoNight algorithm is more vetted, because it has already been used in Monero for over two years. The Equihash algorithm, however, was until Zcash's implementation purely theoretical.\n\n\n Do Monero and ZCash have different coin supply curves?\n\n\nYes. Zcash uses the same supply curve of Bitcoin, whereas Monero uses a faster supply curve. A comparison between both emission curves can be seen here.\n\nThere are two things to note. First, in Zcash 20% of the mining rewards will go to the Zcash Electric Coin Company, which is a US based company, in the first four years. This company subsequently distributes the so-called \"Founders Reward\" to its shareholders. These shareholders are founders, scientists, engineers, advisers, outside council, and investors. They can be seen here. In addition, the \"Founders Reward\" is depicted here. Secondly, in contrast with Monero, Zcash doesn't have a tail emission, which may lead to disincentivized miners in the future.", "This information is based on the last 100 transactions. That particular screenshot is an anomaly and unrepresentative of the norm.\n\nIf you refresh right now, for example, you'll see the median Bitcoin transaction fee is $4.76 vs $0.86 for Monero.\n\nNote that there is work being done on reducing the Monero \"range proof\" size, which will result in smaller transaction sizes (measured in bytes) that will significantly reduce Monero transaction fees in the future.", "Transaction priority is a setting used to set your payment apart from other payments in the mempool if there is any competition, confirming your payment sooner. This can be seen in Bitcoin, where low-fee transactions can take hours at various times to complete, while higher fee transactions are completed relatively quicker since miners (who confirm every transaction) prefer those with higher fees since it earns them more money. \n\nAs you correctly stated, blocks currently are not very full in Monero, so there's no reason to choose a higher fee at this time. However, blocks may increase in size, so this could change, perhaps with the switch to RingCT and the larger block size that will entail.", "Overall fee you pay for a transaction, counted in fiat currency (EUR, USD, etc), depends on the following things:\n\n\nEther to fiat exchange rate (may change over time, out of your control)\nGas price (set by you, but miners may reject mining your transaction if gas price is too low)\nActual gas used, this depends on what smart contract actually do and how optimal smart contract's code is.\nAlso actual gas used depends on the gas schedule, that is hardcoded into Ethereum node software and usually considered immutable, however gas schedule may be changed via hard forks.\n\n\nSo basically fee may change over time, and in general you cannot control this.\nLet me know if you need more details about any of the factors listed.", "It does what the text on your screenshot says: it monitors the blockchain for incoming transactions matching the amount you specify. This is intended as a poor man's point of sale system: if you're selling things for monero, you can use this screen with these steps:\n\n\nfind a customer who wants to buy something and pay with monero\nenter the item's price in the box in your screenshot\nlet the customer scan the QR code\nlet the customer send monero using that QR code using their wallet\nwait till a transaction is reported on this screen, and check it says the payment is for the full amount\noptionally wait for a confirmation or more\ngive the customer the item", "The coin selection in Monero is very simple and naive, so I'm afraid you're not going to find much to take inspiration from.\n\nCurrently, the selection is random, with an equiprobable distribution.\n\nThere is a patch that will be merged along with RingCT (https://github.com/moneromooo-monero/bitmonero/commit/90fb5e411307a949779c65a1931f3462ee3a564d) which improves this, but only to avoid correlation attacks on the inputs.\n\nAs such, there is no attempt made to favor small fees, or transaction size, or number of outputs.\n\nFees are per kB in Monero, so small fees and transaction size are the same metric (down to quantization at 1 kB). Once Ring CT is merged, each transaction will typically have two outputs, growing the TXO set by the same amount. The vast majority of outputs on the blockchain are not known to be spent/unspent, due to the use of ring signatures (but this does not hold for dust, which is typically consolidated at mixin 0), therefore using up many inputs does not actually decrease the TXO set (and this is why it's a TXO set and not a UTXO set).\n\nAdditionally, and I add this since you're using \"changed [...] compared to Bitcoin\" wording: Monero is not a Bitcoin clone. It is a Bytecoin clone. So the algorithm hasn't really changed, it's just a new one. Not sure if you know this or not, but I thought it worth a mention.", "It's not a fee for importing moneros. It's a fee for importing your address's transaction history. A wallet cannot import moneros because moneros are not stored in wallets. They're stored at addresses on the blockchain.\n\nYour address could have a history associated with it, if someone has previously sent moneros to it, or if you you have previously used some other wallet software to spend moneros from it. If you pay the fee, MyMonero will trawl through a copy of the blockchain (kept on a mymonero.com server) and figure out your transaction history.", "Total and fee calculation seems to happen here:\n\n// give user total and fee, and prompt to confirm\nuint64_t total_fee = 0, total_unmixable = 0;\nfor (size_t n = 0; n &lt; ptx_vector.size(); ++n)\n{\n total_fee += ptx_vector[n].fee;\n for (const auto &amp;vin: ptx_vector[n].tx.vin)\n {\n if (vin.type() == typeid(txin_to_key))\n total_unmixable += boost::get&lt;txin_to_key&gt;(vin).amount;\n }\n}\n\n\nPrinting happens a few lines later:\n\nprompt_str = (boost::format(tr(\"Sweeping %s for a total fee of %s. Is this okay? (Y/Yes/N/No)\")) %\n print_money(total_unmixable) %\n print_money(total_fee)).str();\n\n\nSince the correct amount of Monero was actually swept and transacted, the bug is most likely somewhere in the printing, though I'm not seeing anything obvious. \n\nEdit: This is an open issue on github", "The block weight is indeed the sum of the transactions it contains (including the coinbase transaction).\nFor most transactions, the weight is the size in bytes. For transactions with more than 2 outputs and bulletproofs, weight is adjusted up, see details in get_transaction_weight in src/cryptonote_basic/cryptonote_format_utils.cpp.\n\nYou do not normally need to compute fees yourself, this will be done automatically. Moreover, recent versions of Monero will return a new transaction's weight via RPC (as well as its fee).", "XMR.TO admin here.\n\nI do not know where you saw that XMR.TO does not charge a fee in general, this is not true and to the best of my knowledge we never made such statements.\nHowever it is true we do not charge anything on small orders. The reason is that, unlike all competitors, we are a Monero-specific service: we launched in 2015 for both building a business AND serving the Monero community, maximizing Monero's utility immediately rather than waiting for sufficient merchants acceptance in the future. We are also involved with Monero on an individual basis since inception and our interests align very much with those of the Monero community at large.\nAs a result, we typically offer better prices than anyone else for everyday amounts. Currently the service is \"free\" for amounts up to 0.5 BTC.\n\nWe do charge something for larger orders (larger than 0.5 BTC). It is difficult to tell you how much, basically the percentage of the cut is proportional to the amount you exchange. This is why we specify in the FAQ that you need to enter the amount you want to exchange to find out about the specific rate we offer for this specific amount at that time.", "Privacy: Outputs are where amounts of Monero are stored on the blockchain. When you spend one of your outputs in a transaction, it cannot be known which of 7 different source outputs you're really spending. Therefore your anonymity set grows by 40%. Another advantage is that outputs that you receive will now more likely be used as decoys in other people's transactions, which adds to your plausible deniability.\n\nTransaction size: A typical Monero transaction would be 13,792 bytes, up from 13,524 bytes. This is an increase of 2.0%.\n\nTransaction fees: Monero uses KB boundaries when calculating fees. Since a typical transaction would still be counted as a 14KB transaction whether it has 5 or 7 ring members, in most cases the fee would be unchanged. \n\nIt is of course possible that, depending on your specific transaction (especially if you're spending many outputs in the same transaction), that the transaction fee would increase. For example, if you're spending 10 outputs in a single transaction, the fee would increase by 6%.\n\nTransaction verification time: Ring signature verification time is directly proportional to the number of ring members. Verification of the MLSAG ring signatures (which obfuscate the source outputs) would therefore increase by 40%. However, MLSAGs are not the only part of the transaction that needs to be verified. There is also a range proof Borromean ring signature required for each output created. \n\nBy my estimations, a Monero transaction currently requires about 70ms to verify on a single core, of which about 60ms is spent verifying just the output range proofs. Therefore overall verification time would rise from approx 70ms to approx 74ms, which is a 6% increase.\n\nThe choice of 7 is a tradeoff between privacy and verification time.\n\nLater this year, the Borromean ring signatures will be replaced with Bulletproof signatures. This may very significantly reduce transaction verification times and provide for the possibility of increasing ring sizes further.", "The monero wallet will try to use two inputs to each transaction, in an attempt to have most transactions look like each other (two inputs, and two outputs). Since in a typical transaction you will get one output back as change, it means that you spend two outputs, and get one in return (the second output going to whoever you're paying). Thus, over time, you will coalesce your own outputs, which leads to the problem you're describing.\n\nThere are two settings in monero-wallet-cli which can control this and avoid coalescing outputs down to too few: min-outputs-count and min-outputs-value. They're viewable and settable using the set command: just running set will show all settings, including those.\n\nThose settings control when a second output will be added onto your transactions when it is not necessary (ie, when it's just in an attempt to make your transaction look like a typical 2 -> 2 transaction). monero-wallet-cli will only include such an output if it wouldn't cause the wallet to have less than min-outputs-count outputs of value at least min-outputs-value monero. Of course, if using two or more of your outputs if necessary to meet the payment+fee amount, this will be done regardless.\n\nFor example, you can run:\n\nset min-outputs-count 5\nset min-outputs-value 1\n\n\nThis will cause monero-wallet-cli to try to use only one input for a transaction once you have only 5 outputs left over 1 monero.", "\"This address received xx.xx monero, but the transaction is not yet mined\" means that the transaction is seen by the Monero network, but has not been mined yet. Miners select transactions based on the highest fee per byte, to maximize their income. If your transaction has a fee that's a bit on the low side and there is a continuous stream of incoming transactions with a higher (even by a little) fee per byte ratio, those other transactions will be selected and mined first. Your transaction will be mined when there are no more other transactions with a higher fee per byte than yours (or not enough to prevent yours from being included in a block).\n\nAlternatively, your transaction is invalid (for instance, it tries to double spend one or more of its inputs), but that is less likely. If this is the case, the transaction will disappear from the network after 24 hours and the monero will reappear in the sender's wallet (though the double spent inputs are really spent, so the real balance will be smaller as the original was incorrect).", "You would end up paying the transaction fee.\n\nIn every cryptocurrency I know of the sender submits the amount they want to the send to the network PLUS the fee they want to spend. The receiver gets the amount you wanted to send and the miner of your block takes the fee you put up, provided it is high enough.\n\nSo yes, if you send $20 of monero with a 10$ fee, you'll end up $30 poorer.", "The transaction priority is implied by the fee which you set for it. You can estimate the fee with your desired priority using https://bitcoincore.org/en/doc/0.16.0/rpc/util/estimatesmartfee/ \n\nSimply compute your transaction size (bytes) and adjust the transaction fee according to the sat/kB returned by the estimatesmartfee call.", "A specifies a gas price.\n\nM1 and M2 decide whether to mine A's transaction if the gas price is high enough. If A's gas price was 1.5 GWei/gas, then only M1 would choose to mine A's transaction (since M2 wants 2 GWei/gas).\n\nA always pays 1000 (given F costs 1,000 gas) multiplied by the gas price it specified; miners cannot change the transaction fee A pays and can only choose whether to include A's transaction in a block.\n\nOnly the winning miner gets the transaction fee paid by A. Other miners and all other (full) nodes do have to verify the transaction and store its results: yes, it's unfair to them and part of the problem related to incentives and scalability.\n\nMore information, https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/02/01/on-transaction-fees-and-the-fallacy-of-market-based-solutions\n\n\n For each individual transaction that a miner includes, the costs are\n borne not just by that miner, but by every single node in the entire\n network.", "Why does Monero create two or more inputs for transactions?\n\n\nThis is done to try and make more transactions look the same. An attempt is made to make the transactions a 2/2 (2 input, 2 output transaction). Therefore, even if one of your inputs has enough to fund the output(s), the wallet will attempt to add another input as well. \n\nSource comment(s):\n\nwallet2.cpp#L9315\n\n// for rct, since we don't see the amounts, we will try to make all transactions\n// look the same, with 1 or 2 inputs, and 2 outputs. One input is preferable, as\n// this prevents linking to another by provenance analysis, but two is ok if we\n// try to pick outputs not from the same block. We will get two outputs, one for\n// the destination, and one for change.\n\n\nThen later:\n\nwallet2.cpp#L9361\n\n// while:\n// - we have something to send\n// - or we need to gather more fee\n// - or we have just one input in that tx, which is rct (to try and make all/most rct txes 2/2)\n\n\n\n So it is not the case that Monero is combining multiple inputs to send a large amount of XMR.\n\n\nThis is a slightly different question/observation and is incorrect. Monero absolutely uses multiple inputs to fund a large output. For example, if you own three outputs with values 10, 50 and 100 XMR and want to spend 130 XMR, the wallet will create a transaction with two inputs (your owned outputs that have 100 and 50), and two new outputs (with 130 and 20). The 2nd output is your change.", "An arbitrary amount of arbitrary data can be added in a transaction. The extra field contains data with a high level structure. Several fields are predefined, such as public key, or extra nonce. In order to add custom data there, you would need to define another data type, and store it in that extra field. Minergate recently did just this, adding 32 bytes of data with unknown semantics.\n\nNote that since Monero has transactions fees which depend on transaction size, the more data you add to the extra field, the more you will have to pay in fees (currently 0.01 monero per kB).", "History\n\nRyo is a fork of Sumokoin (SUMO), which itself is a fork of Monero (XMR).\n\nSumokoin (SUMO) launched with the following statement:\n\n\n Sumokoin is forked from the source code of Monero cryptocurreny, one of the most innovative digital coins which is well-known for security, privacy, untraceability and active development, therefore, naturally inheriting all of those great features, yet without the burden of its past.\n\n\nSumokoin (SUMO) launched following the initial release of the \"An Empirical Analysis of Traceability in the Monero Blockchain\" paper released on 13 April 2017. While this paper introduced a number of Monero privacy limitations, the majority of them were limited to pre-RingCT outputs, ones that Monero had not used in meaningful numbers since January 2017. Future transactions were subject to the \"guess-newest\" heuristic for some time after, but Sumokoin (SUMO) did not change the selection algorithm. Thus, the claim that the fork removes the \"burden of [Monero's] past\" is dubious, since there was no practical benefit to Sumokoin (SUMO) transactions at the time of launch.\n\nAccording to the Ryo roadmap, the following occurred in June 2018:\n\n\n Sumokoin hardforked to ASIC friendly POW and Ryo continued on with the original chain.\n\n\nRyo forked following accusations that the Sumokoin (SUMO) team had printed additional funds for the founders than was publicly claimed. The Ryo team that resulted felt that the Sumokoin (SUMO) team was not knowledgeable enough to maintain a Monero fork.\n\nCode Changes\n\nRyo began on a largely Monero codebase and merged a number of upstream features, including multisig, fluffy (compact) blocks, and bulletproofs.\n\nMonero and Ryo use their own custom Proof of Work (PoW) algorithms.\n\nPayment IDs\n\nMonero has slowly been deprecating payment IDs, working on removing both forms completely and eventual subaddress adoption. Monero currently supports legacy payment IDs and short payment IDs. Ryo removed support for legacy payment IDs. Ryo and Monero automatically include a short payment ID in all transactions. Ryo developers argue that removing long payment IDs is good for privacy, which is true. However, it is incorrect to say that Ryo transactions are necessarily less identifiable as a result, since Ryo has fewer transactions.\n\nI haven't found a good resource that reports the number of Ryo transactions per day, but I estimate there are less than 500. Monero typically has >4000, so there is a greater total number of other transactions that match various spend behaviors. Of course, users should reduce their exposure by avoiding payment IDs whenever possible.\n\nNote that Monero and RYO now offer equal payment ID protections.\n\nRingsize\n\nMonero uses ringsize 11. Ryo uses ringsize 25. Ryo proponents argue that larger ringsizes are better, which is strictly true. I have included a graph below indicating the proportion of rings that would be compromised (y-axis) if attackers had knowledge over a certain proportion of outputs (x-axis). Both cryptocurrencies provide essentially the same protection until 65% compromised. The larger ringsize protects similarly until about 82% compromised. This buffer of protection is useful.\n\n\n\nHowever, it is simpler to have visibility over the same proportion of outputs for a smaller cryptocurrency than a larger one. Suppose I create 500 transactions in perpetuity on both Monero and Ryo, and I have no access to any other information. I would have visibility over about 500/(500+500) = 50% of Ryo outputs, while I would have visibility of only 500/(4000+500) = 11% of Monero outputs.\n\nPut another way, let's compare the number of perpetual transactions I would need to have visibility over to compromise 1 ring per day. With Monero, I would need to create approximately 3100 transactions. With Ryo, I would need approximately 575. Ryo would need ringsize ~42 to provide the same protection as Monero against someone creating 3100 transactions.\n\nLarger ringsizes may be better for privacy if you compare a small vs. large ringsize for a single network. However, large networks naturally have better protection from the other transactions and their entropy. Small cryptocurrencies need larger ringsizes to provide the same privacy level according to this one metric. There are many other metrics of assessing relative privacy levels, but this is one for a basic form of attack.\n\nRelative Pool Information\n\nThe number of pool-related transactions do not scale proportionally to network size. Small networks have a higher proportion of pool-related transactions than large ones. While transactions paid to miners may partially scale, blocks mined don't scale the same way.\n\nPublic mining pools often provide a lot of public information that observers can use to have visibility over outputs. At the time of writing, https://ryo.miner.rocks controls ~60% of the hashrate, and they publish lists of blocks mined and transactions paid. Observers can use this information to construct a list of outputs that can only be spent by the pool, not by other network participants. Many Monero pools also publish this information, but the total impact of this information is lower for Monero since the mining pools are a smaller proportion of network activity.\n\nFees\n\nMonero uses 3 main preset fee values. Ryo uses 1 main fee value. Single fees are better for privacy, but there are some usability tradeoffs when network congestion is high.\n\nTransaction Structure\n\nRyo imposes some stricter transaction restrictions on the consensus layer in some cases, which prevents malicious or oblivious wallets from sending some types of revealing transactions.\n\nSummary\n\nMonero and Ryo are very similar, since they share most of the same code. Only a few parameters are changed between them. However, any changes to the code are relatively minor if the network is significantly smaller. Ryo has some strict improvements, but they need to weighed against Monero's larger network size. Comparing certain parameters in a vacuum without considering the wider network situation leads to false conclusions.", "Does the transaction fee of bitcored or bitcoind change everyday?\n\n\nIt will often change because it will estimate the fee for certain confirmation targets (e.g. confirm within 4 blocks). The fee estimation will update with each block, so it may change every day. It may also change more or less frequently than daily depending on the transaction situation for each block.\n\n\n Am I required to set transaction fee of bitcoind by using settxfee method?\n\n\nNo. You only need to do that if you want to specify the transaction fee instead of using the estimation. I recommend that you use the estimation as setting the fee yourself will often occur in overpaying or underpaying.", "The minimum transaction fee is proportional to the size of the transaction data. Assuming you are making a typical transaction and are not using custom privacy levels, then the minimum transaction fee depends on the number of inputs being spent. The number of inputs being spent is a consequence of the size of the stray change outputs and the size of the typical transaction amounts you receive relative to the amount you're sending. It's not easy therefore to correlate the number of inputs being spent to the amount being spent in a transaction.\n\nThe fee can be increased to give the transaction higher priority. You could argue that high value transactions are more likely to be given an expensive fee because the transaction is more important. This is a weak correlation though.\n\nThe main thing to note is that there is no rule that requires the fee to be proportional to the amount being spent, so disclosure of the fee does not give away much. Disclosure of the fee is necessary, because miners need to know what fee is being offered in order to decide whether the fee is enough to allow the transaction to compete for inclusion in the next block being mined.", "There are two scenarios we could see as the block subsidy (inflation) halves every ~4 years:\n\n\nThe number of fee-paying transactions increase per block whilst median next-block fee remains low/negligible\nThe fee per on-chain transaction increases\n\n\nWe are currently seeing scenario 2 play out, where most user transactions are expected to take place off-chain. Transactions that are made on-chain are expected to be settlements of many off-chain transactions, likely collecting a large number of smaller fees within.\n\nBoth scenarios are fueled mostly by adoption of the network, and until the subsidy is gone (zero inflation), increases in coin price will help to sustain miner incentive.", "The fee depends (in part) on the exact size of your transaction, and your transaction size depends (in part) on how many outputs you are spending. Therefore to determine the fee, you first need to construct the transaction to determine its size. You can do this using the transfer method with do_not_relay set to true.\n\nIf you are happy with the fee, you can then submit the transaction to the network using the relay_tx method.", "You can select a higher fee if you want. This choice is intentionally limited to a 1x, 2x, and 3x multiplier to avoid leaking too much information via the fee (ie, if you're the only one using a 2.7x fee, your transactions will stick out).\n\n\nNOTE: from two weeks after the v3 fork, the fees multipliers will change from 1/2/3 to 1/20/166. The simplewallet setting blow is renamed from fee-multiplier to priority, so 1/2/3 are still used in simplewallet, but do not express actual multipliers anymore. The base fee will also decrease by 5 times at the same time.\n\n\nThis behavior is a global setting in simplewallet, and can be changed with: set fee-multiplier 1 to reset to default, same with 2 and 3.\n\nMiners will select transactions based on decreasing fee per byte, so transactions with a higher fee multiplier will get priority over transactions with lower fee multipliers.\n\nAs J Dog says, a glut of transactions in the pool cannot be expected to last long term, as the block size will increase to meet demand.", "\"Gas\" is the name for a special unit used in Ethereum. It measures how much \"work\" an action or set of actions takes to perform: for example, to calculate one Keccak256 cryptographic hash it will take 30 gas each time a hash is calculated, plus a cost of 6 more gas for every 256 bits of data being hashed. Every operation that can be performed by a transaction or contract on the Ethereum platform costs a certain number of gas, with operations that require more computational resources costing more gas than operations that require few computational resources.\n\nThe reason gas is important is that it helps to ensure an appropriate fee is being paid by transactions submitted to the network. By requiring that a transaction pay for each operation it performs (or causes a contract to perform), we ensure that network doesn't become bogged down with performing a lot of intensive work that isn't valuable to anyone. This is a different strategy than the Bitcoin transaction fee, which is based only on the size in kilobytes of a transaction. Since Ethereum allows arbitrarily complex computer code to be run, a short length of code can actually result in a lot of computational work being done. So it's important to measure the work done directly instead of just choosing a fee based on the length of a transaction or contract.\n\nSo if gas is basically a transaction fee, how do you pay it? This is where it gets a little tricky. Although gas is a unit that things can be measured in, there isn't any actual token for gas. That is, you can't own 1000 gas. Instead, gas exists only inside of the Ethereum virtual machine as a count of how much work is being performed. When it comes to actually paying for the gas, the transaction fee is charged as a certain number of ether, the built-in token on the Ethereum network and the token with which miners are rewarded for producing blocks.\n\nThis might seem odd at first. Why don't operations just have a cost measured in ether directly? The answer is that ether, like bitcoins, have a market price that can change rapidly! But the cost of computation doesn't go up or down just because the price of ether changes. So it's helpful to separate out the price of computation from the price of the ether token, so that the cost of an operation doesn't have to be changed every time the market moves.\n\nThe terminology here gets a little messy. Operations in the EVM have gas cost, but gas itself also has a gas price measured in terms of ether. Every transaction specifies the gas price it is willing to pay in ether for each unit of gas, allowing the market to decide the relationship between the price of ether and the cost of computing operations (as measured in gas). It's the combination of the two, total gas used multiplied by gas price paid, that results in the total fee paid by a transaction.\n\nAs tricky as it is, it's important to understand this distinction, because it results in one of the most confusing things about Ethereum transactions to the initial learner: there is a difference between your transaction running out of gas and your transaction not having a high enough fee. If the gas price I set in my transaction is too low, no one will even bother to run my transaction in the first place. It will simply not be included in the blockchain by miners. But if I provide an acceptable gas price, and then my transaction results in so much computational work that the combined gas costs go past the amount I attached as a fee, that gas counts as \"spent\" and I don't get it back. The miner will stop processing the transaction, revert any changes it made, but still include it in the blockchain as a \"failed transaction\", collecting the fees for it. This may seem harsh, but when you realise that the real work for the miner was in performing the computation, you can see that they will never get those resources back either. So it's only fair that you pay them for the work they did, even though your badly designed transaction ran out of gas.\n\nProviding too big of a fee is also different than providing too much ether. If you set a very high gas price, you will end up paying lots of ether for only a few operations, just like setting a super high transaction fee in bitcoin. You'll definitely be prioritised to the front of the line, but your money is gone. If you provided a normal gas price, however, and just attached more ether than was needed to pay for the gas that your transaction consumed, the excess amount will be refunded back to you. Miners only charge you for the work that they actually do. You can think of the gas price as the hourly wage for the miner, and the gas cost as their timesheet of work performed.\n\nThere are a lot of other subtleties to gas, but that should give you the basics! Gas is the key mechanism that makes the complex computations in Ethereum \"safe\" for the network to work on, because any programs that run out of control will only last as long as the money provided by the people who requested they be run. When the money stops, the miners stop working on it. And the mistakes you make in your program will only affect the people who pay to use it--the rest of the network can't suffer performance issues due to your error. They will simply get a big payday when the performance issues consume all of your ether! Without this critical technique, the idea of a general-purpose blockchain would have been completely impossible.\n\ntl;dr:\n\n\nGas is the way that fees are calculated\nThe fees are still paid in ether, though, which is different from gas\nThe gas cost is the amount of work that goes into something, like the number of hours of labour, whereas the gas price is like the hourly wage you pay for the work to be done. The combination of the two determines your total transaction fee.\nIf your gas price is too low, no one will process your transaction\nIf your gas price is fine but the gas cost of your transaction runs \"over budget\" the transaction fails but still goes into the blockchain, and you don't get the money back for the work that the labourers did.\nThis makes sure that nothing runs forever, and that people will be careful about the code that they run. It keeps both miners and users safe from bad code!", "Double spends are prevented by the use of key images, which are sent along with each output being spent in a transaction, and which are checked for uniqueness before allowing the transaction.\n\nIn the Cryptonote protocol, an output's private key can be used to uniquely generate a key image in such a way that a miner can check a purported key image really is correct. When spending an output, its key image is calculated by the sender, and included in the transaction. Miners then check these key images are real, and check whether they were already seen in the blockchain. If they were, it means the output being spent was already spent in a previous transaction, which is then discarded.\n\nSince a miner can verify a purported key image, but not create one without the private key (similar to a cryptographic signature), only the owner of the output may spend it - just once.\n\nThe set of key images must then be kept for lookup by miners and other nodes. This is the \"unbounded TXO set\" that is often mentioned as a cons of using Monero/Cryptonote. Each key image is 32 bytes long.\n\nOnce RingCT is enabled, this system will not change, as RingCT includes that system as well. However, since transactions will not have to split amounts anymore, that TXO set growth will substantially decrease.\n\nUPDATE: RingCT is now enabled. You can read more about it here: What is RingCT and how does it make Monero private?", "Every computation on the Ethereum network cost gas, so do value transfers like on the bitcoin blockchain.\n\nEvery computational step, or OPCODE requires a specific amount of gas (which is hardcoded). You pay for gas using ether. To determine the fee you pay you calculate:\n\nrequired gas * gas price = fee\n\nFor example a simple value transfer cost 21000 gas, the current gas price is dynamically set by users and miners and is currently ~0.00000005 ether, so the value transaction would cost ~0.00105 ether or $0.001 to $0.002 USD at current prices. Current BTC transaction fees vary anywhere from $0.01 to $0.09 USD \n\nUsers can set the gas price they are willing to pay and and miners can set the minimum gas price they are willing to accept. This creates a dynamic market, which allows ethers \"fee\" to be dynamic and adopt to ether price swings.", "We can get a rough idea of a cost lower bound by doing the following:\n\nThis command looks at the tx_outputs database, which lists all the outputs on the blockchain:\n\nmdb_stat -s tx_outputs ~/.bitmonerod/lmdb\n\nWe see that this database holds 17896556 entries. In order to get 20% of the entries, an attacker would have to create about 4.5 million new outputs (100 * 4.5 / (17.9+4.5) == 20). An output requires at least a 32 byte public key on the blockchain, so that'd mean a total of 144 MB to be added. At a cost of 0.01 monero/kB, that gives you a lower bound of 1406 monero in tx fees.\n\nNow, this is a lower bound. You'd need more data. Each transaction needs at least one input (at least one 64 byte signature). The 32 byte public key is not the only thing that is needed per vout (at least 2 extra bytes).\n\nIn order to get 40%, you'd need 12 million extra outputs (3750 monero lower bound), and in order to get 60%, you'd need 27 million extra outputs (8437 monero lower bound).\n\nIf you want to concentrate on a given denomination, the same reasoning applies, with a twist: there are currently 812877 outputs of size 10 monero. But in that case, you will need to include change (or waste a lot of monero, or have a lot of monero in the first place). In the original case, I took the best case: you take an input of yours, and you divide it into as many outputs as the transaction will allow, quantize, and throw away the rest. I assumed you could perfectly quantize (the varint encoding takes just a byte) and you threw away nothing (otherwise it adds up to the tx fees). Now, if you want all your outputs to be a useful size (for instance, 10 monero), then you need to recover the remainders after splitting, in order to use them as inputs to a subsequent tx, as that remainder is now a significant amount of monero. As example: a 60 kB transaction can hold at most 1875 outputs (using 32 byte per output again, so an overestimate). If you have a single 20000 monero input, you can make 1875 new outputs of size 10, and you have 1250 monero left. You don't want to lose them, so you pay them as change, and then need to consolidate them with other change as inputs for a later tx. All that adds overhead to the amount of data you have to pay for.\n\nNow, the chain is not going to wait, so an adversary will need to get more than that, especially if they want to keep that threshold. If the outputs are created as a one off, the adversary will own less and less of the total outputs are the chain grows.\n\nIf such a sustained attack were to happen, transaction fees would most likely be temporarily increased, which would make the cost go up by as much.\n\nRingCT will indeed avoid the need to split amounts by denominations, and any RingCT input will be able to mix with any other. RingCT transaction size will also get larger per output (but also need less inputs). So creating a lot of outputs will cost more, too.", "The dynamic block size limit is inherited from CryptoNote, and is described in the whitepaper:\n\nUsers pay for storing the blockchain and shall be entitled to vote for its size. Every miner deals with the trade-off between balancing the costs and profit from the fees and sets his own “soft-limit” for creating blocks. Also the core rule for the maximum block size is necessary for preventing the blockchain from being flooded with bogus transaction, however this value should not be hard-coded.\nLet M_N be the median value of the last N blocks sizes. Then the “hard-limit” for the size of accepting blocks is 2*M_N . It averts the blockchain from bloating but still allows the limit to slowly grow with time if necessary.\nTransaction size does not need to be limited explicitly. It is bounded by the size of a block; and if somebody wants to create a huge transaction with hundreds of inputs/outputs (or with the high ambiguity degree in ring signatures), he can do so by paying sufficient fee.\n\nThe median window is not mentioned at all, so it was likely just inherited from the source. I'm not sure whether Monero changed this. In any case - it's arbitrary.\nChanging it to a smaller value would make the system more responsive in case of increased transaction pressure and it could clear the backlog faster &amp; cheaper (fee-wise).\nChanging it to a bigger value would make the system less responsive and any queue would likely take longer to clear but the system would be more resistant to manipulation - like if someone is willing pay higher fees just to inflate the block size, it would cost them more with a bigger window.\nWhile the choice of median is not explained in too much detail, it is convenient because it means that a single actor can't move the blocksize. You will always need more than 50% of blocks to be bigger (or smaller) than median to actually affect the median. So, users have to first &quot;bribe&quot; the miners for an increase (enough to compensate for the penalty) but it's no guarantee - the miners don't have to mine a bigger block even though it'd be more economic, so 51% miners could block any increase regardless of the fee - if they see it as a risk for their operations due to bandwith requirements etc.", "The price of a transaction is equal to gasUsed * gasPrice. gasUsed is ultimately set by the protocol, and would be the same on different forks. gasPrice is set by the user, but miners can choose not to accept a transaction if they think that the price is too low (or for any other reason).\n\nAs such, if the price of ETH doubles, you can halve the gasPrice and pay the same fee. If the price of ETH halves, you can double the gasPrice and pay the same fee. The cost to a miner of actually executing a transaction is the same, either way.\n\nSo to answer your question, it depends on whether ETC miners are willing to mine cheaper transactions, or whether ETH miners would demand more expensive transactions. Theoretically, neither has a reason to do so, aside from doing so accidentally leaving the gasPrice they ask to the unadjusted default. (Parity, as far as I know, compensates by changing the gasPrice relative to the current price of ETH in USD.) So there shouldn't be any real price difference between running on one or the other.", "Answering my own question:\n'Storage' (the bytes on chain) is burned and isn't related to the fee.\nThe minimal_nanotez_per_byte refers to the size of the transaction itself when serialized to bytes with a signature.", "You have to understand priority levels using the transfer command. Read: What does the &quot;default&quot; priority (priority = 0) do in monero-wallet-cli? \n\nThere are 4 levels:\n\nFirst note that the priority levels unimportant, normal, elevated, and priority correspond to multipliers of x1, x4, x20, and x166, respectively.\n\nTo send with lowest you would do:\n\ntransfer unimportant &lt;address&gt; &lt;amount&gt;\n\n\nExample output:\n\n[wallet 46xxxx]: transfer unimportant 4BSX2Par....LU2T6xxx 2 \n\nThere is currently a 1 block backlog at that fee level. Is this okay? (Y/Yes/N/No)Y\nSending 2.000000000000. The transaction fee is 0.003088120000\nIs this okay? (Y/Yes/N/No): Y\nTransaction successfully submitted, transaction &lt;xx9xcvd3434...3243&gt;\nYou can check its status by using the `show_transfers` command.\n[wallet 46hxxxx]:" ]

[ "Ptolemy was an astronomer and mathematician. He believed that the Earth was the center of the Universe. The word for earth in Greek is geo, so we call this idea a \"geocentric\" theory." ]

[ "Today most people believe the earth is a round planet orbiting in a solar system around a star known as the sun. ... The ancient astronomer Ptolemy's geocentric theory, that Earth was the center of the universe, remained accepted as fact over 1,200 years after his death.", "The author of the First Epistle is termed John the Evangelist, who most scholars believe is not the same as John the Apostle. Most scholars believe the three Johannine epistles have the same author, but there is no consensus if this was also the author of the Gospel of John.", "In Plato's theory, the cave represents people who believe that knowledge comes from what we see and hear in the world – empirical evidence. The cave shows that believers of empirical knowledge are trapped in a 'cave' of misunderstanding.", "The answer took a while for astronomers to figure out, leading to a debate between what is known as the geocentric (Earth-centered) model and the heliocentric (Sun-centered model). ... The Earth was in the center of it all (geocentric), with these planets revolving around it.", "No, Hopsin does not believe \"one mean invented college.\" His whole point was that, the history of scholars who eventually did put together the world's first universities did not go to universities themselves, because they didn't exist.", "According to your textbook, who is MOST correct about influences on intelligence? Rachel, who believes intelligence is determined by a combination of heredity and the environment. ... Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences includes several intelligences included in psychometric theories of intelligence.", "Modernization Theory believes that social equality is the result of material growth while Dependency Theory believes that eth dependent country enhances social inequality which can lead to political authoritarianism (Modernization theory and Dependency theory, 2005).", "As nouns the difference between scholar and student is that scholar is a student; one who studies at school or college while student is a person who studies a particular academic subject.", "The difference between the continuous and discontinuous theory of matter is that the continuous theory believes that you could take any substance and divide it in half over and over again. The discontinuous theory believes that instead of being continuous matter is in fact composed of tiny individual particles.", "Theories and models of educational management have been categorized by different scholars. Cuthbert (1984) classified educational management theories to five groups including analytic-rational, pragmatic-rational, political, phenomenological and interactionist models.", "The book has earned the reputation of being a masterpiece. It has also been described as an intricate New Testament book. Scholars believe it was written for Jewish Christians who lived in Jerusalem. Its purpose was to exhort Christians to persevere in the face of persecution.", "Pupil (in the current context) is a student, a scholar or a person who learns from a teacher or another learned person. Pupils is the plural of pupil and refers to a group of students or scholars.", "Did the Man Who Invented College Go to College? ... No, Hopsin does not believe \"one mean invented college.\" His whole point was that, the history of scholars who eventually did put together the world's first universities did not go to universities themselves, because they didn't exist.", "Their origin and identity are much in dispute. Traditional Western scholars believe them to be Scandinavian Vikings, an offshoot of the Varangians, who moved southward from the Baltic coast and founded the first consolidated state among the eastern Slavs, centring on Kiev.", "The Epistle to the Hebrews, or Letter to the Hebrews, or in the Greek manuscripts, simply To the Hebrews (Πρὸς Ἑβραίους) is one of the books of the New Testament. ... It has also been described as an intricate New Testament book. Scholars believe it was written for Jewish Christians who lived in Jerusalem.", "Trait theory of leadership believes that leaders have certain traits that make them a good leader. On the other hand, the behavioral theory of leadership believes that leaders behave in one of several different ways.", "Modern Muslim scholars believe that it is obligatory in Islamic law that men and women abide by the rules of hijab (as outlined in their respective school of thought).", "LEADERS ARE BORN AND NOT MADE The theory consequently helps to predict an effective leader based on his/her traits (Di Giulio, n.d.). Underscoring the approach of trait theory to determine a successful leader, scholars outlined leadership characteristics after observing different perspectives.", "Islam. The Quran does not directly forbid cannabis. There is a controversy among Muslim scholars about cannabis as some deemed it to be similar to khamr (alcoholic drink) and therefore believed it to be haraam (forbidden). Other scholars, especially in Shia Islam consider cannabis to be halal (permissible).", "This is why many scholars believe that in African thought, religion is the foundation of morality and that the moral imperative is derived from the deity; thus that faith gives sense to morality.", "The big bang theory believes that the universe always changes but the steady state theory believes it is and always has been the exact same for ever and will never change. The big bang believes it was formed by a big ball of matter and it hasn't always been around and will eventually die.", "What is the difference between Darwin's theory of evolution and Lamarck's theory of evolution? Lamarck believed that organisms could acquire characteristics during their lifetime that they could pass down to their offspring, but Darwin did not believe these traits could be passed down.", "Theory Y managers are likely to believe that employees are motivated by the value of their contribution.", "In the past, leadership scholars considered charisma, intelligence and other personality traits to be the key to effective leadership. ... Such theories suggest that leaders with sufficient character and will can triumph over whatever reality they confront.", "Kant's theory is an example of a deontological moral theory–according to these theories, the rightness or wrongness of actions does not depend on their consequences but on whether they fulfill our duty. Kant believed that there was a supreme principle of morality, and he referred to it as The Categorical Imperative.", "The God Who Speaks is a 90-minute documentary that traces the evidence of the Bible's authority through interviews with some of the world's most respected biblical scholars. This film answers common objections about the Bible's reliability and equips believers to confidently base their lives on the power of God's Word.", "Muhammad Auwal Adam Albani Zaria (27 September 1960 – 1 February 2014) was a Nigerian Islamic scholar who specialized in the field of Hadith. ... He was a prominent Islamic scholar and the leader of the Salafis movement in Nigeria.", "Oral sex is permitted provided that secretion from the genitalia is not consumed and no injury or infliction made. The consumption of semen on the other hand is believed to be not permissible by some scholars.", "Confucian scholars believed that human beings were inherently good and nature endowed them with four fundamental virtues: humanity (仁), righteousness (義), propriety (禮) and wisdom (知).", "['Ethnocentric staffing.', 'Polycentric staffing.', 'Geocentric staffing.']", "Though the democratic peace theory was not rigorously or scientifically studied until the 1960s, the basic principles of the concept had been argued as early as the 1700s in the works of philosopher Immanuel Kant and political theorist Thomas Paine.", "['geographic.', 'geothermal.', 'geophysics.', 'geoscience.', 'geomorphic.', 'geometrics.', 'geocentric.', 'geometrize.']" ]

[ "Gary Duncan" ]

[ "A man in black", "The Man Who", "The Man Who Was Thursday", "The Man Who Was Peter Pan", "The Man Who Hated Laughter", "The Man Who Laughs", "The Man Who Loved Children", "The Man Who Sold the World", "The Man Who Fell to Earth", "The Man Who Saw Tomorrow", "The Man Who Won the War", "The Man Who Bridged the Mist", "The Man Who Was Never Born", "Who", "The Man Who Lost the Sea", "the Who", "The Man Who Came To Dinner", "The Man Who Owns the Sky", "Who Made Who", "The Man Who Had Three Arms", "Who?", "The Man Who Thinks He Can", "The Man Who Chased His Shadow", "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", "v", "The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing", "Black Is Black", "Duncan's Cafe", "Duncan's of Edinburgh", "the man", "Man", "To Be a Man" ]

[ "Military-run telecom giant Viettel is offering a push mail service, allowing mobile phone users to keep track of their email accounts without having to access the Internet." ]

[ "Direct mail service company 'PostForce' is Offering free mailing on large letters.", "Viettel, Alcatel-Lucent and Research In Motion have launched the BlackBerry Bold in Vietnam.", "Continental Airlines has selected Silverpop, a provider of e-mail marketing and marketing automation solutions, as its e-mail service provider for the UK and Ireland.", "China-based AsiaInfo Holdings, a provider of telecom software services, has signed a contract with China Unicom to build out a nationwide mobile e-mail system with a capacity of 14 million users to support e-mail functions on mobile phones.", "Micro-soft is pulling the plug on Hotmail, one of the early leaders in web-based e-mail, and plans to transition the service's more than 350 million users to a new e-mail service called Outlook.com, the software giant announced yesterday.", "K Krishnamohan, founder and chief executive officer, Fifth C, said, ``BlackBerry controversy has given us a lot of visibility and apart from that, mobile users are now able to differentiate push mail from pull mail services.''", "HP partners will offer USA.NET's suite of hosted messaging, collaboration, e-mail archiving, security and mobility services.", "Recently, Intermedia launched its hosted PBX service, a VoIP-based service that integrates with Intermedia's hosted Exchange e-mail service to enable customers to access hosted PBX and unified communications features.", "Microsoft on Monday added new security features to its Windows Live Hotmail web mail service to help users regain control of hijacked accounts.", "Web and mail security service provide GFI Software has launched GFI LANguard 2011, the latest version of the company's network vulnerability scanning and patch management offering.", "Nokia has launched XpressPrint, a new service which allows N-series camera phone users to order prints via LAN or cellular networks directly from their smartphone.", "Internet search giant Google has expanded its push into the telephone market, offering a service that provides a single number for home, work and cell phones and turns voicemail into email.", "Thai mobile operator True Move has introduced its own branded smartphone and tablet computer dubbed True Beyond, reports the Bangkok Post.", "Indonesian mobile operator Indosat and Research In Motion have launched BlackBerry On Demand prepaid option for BlackBerry internet service in Indonesia.", "Bank of the West has selected ClairMail, a provider of mobile banking and payment solutions, to power its new mobile banking service.", "South Africa's mobile operator Vodacom has launched its March Madness promotion offering prepaid subscribers 20 percent free airtime when they recharge their account during the month of March.", "37% of e-mail marketers don't test their e-mail campaigns, with a third of that number saying it's because they don't know how, according to a recent survey, ``The use of testing in e-mail marketing,'' by e-mail marketing services company eROI.", "Telenet, a provider of media and telecommunication services in Belgium, reportedly has selected iPass software and services to underpin its new TelenetConnect offering.", "Vinaphone, the third-largest mobile operator in Vietnam, has handed its creative business to Grey following a competitive five-way pitch against Ogilvy, JWT, Lowe and TBWA.", "The electronic money order service was launched in three main post offices in the town and some sub-post offices in the district, including Chavakkad, Punnayurkulam, Pavaratty, Guruvayur and Vadanappilly, on Saturday.", "News Service Citrix plans to announce Monday that it will buy VMLogix as part of a larger push to offer more self-service tools and address concerns like vendor lock-in facing enterprises using the cloud.", "Warid Telecom has introduced new post-paid packages that include greater convenience, maximum value, free SMS bundles and up to 40 per cent savings on call rates.", "Dallas-based FedEx Office, the provider copy, print, and shipping services which was previously FedEx Kinko's, said today that it has rolled out free, unlimited Wi-Fi at most of its US locations.", "The ailing US Postal Service said Tuesday it was offering buyouts to 30,000 employees to slash US$500 million in labour costs as it battles slumping mail volumes and heavy losses.", "Messaging services provider RoutoMessaging has launched its own commercial SMS operator network providing enterprises, wholesalers and governments with a service delivery platform.", "Salem-Keizer Special Education Advisory Council is meeting Monday evening in the Reprographics and Mail Services building.", "Mail delivery in the area could take a day longer when the US Postal Services moves its Clovis mail processing center to Lubbock, according to a spokesman for the US Postal Service.", "Associated Press Senate Democrats are pushing to reopen some unemployment offices that closed amid a shift to offering more services by computer, but they acknowledge the governor's opposition will likely stop their effort.", "CaféPrevention.com introduces its latest postcard to open up the lines of communication between adults and teens to reduce OTC and prescription drug abuse among teens.", "Blockbuster on Tuesday announced that it has added video game rentals to its mail order DVD rental service.", "Cosmote Romania launched new 'Connect Mobile' data add-ons for both postpaid as well as prepaid customers.", "Singapore today launched a new mobile phone service where the public in the city-state can obtain vital information on the government through short messaging service." ]

[ "Mumbai: Mumbai city reported two fire incident cases on Monday. First fire incident was reported in a godown at Maharashtra Compound in Govandi’s Baiganwadi area on afternoon. Second fire incident was reported at Deonar dumping ground.\nAccording to Disaster Management cell officials of BMC in Godown fire incident three female workers jumped from the fire spot to save themselves and received minor injuries. “This fire could have had major casualties. Fortunately, the fire took place during lunch time when all the workers had already moved out of the godown,” said one of the workers of the godown who do not wish to be named.\nThe fire started at around 1.25pm and engulfed the ground floor of the 10,000 sq ft godown. Within 15 minutes, fire department officials declared it a major fire and sent eight fire tenders and four jumbo water tankers rushed to the spot, officials added.\nThe godown had garment, tiles and plywoods. One of the office bearer of other units of godown said, “The fire may have spread because of wood or garment material. Also, The godown had event management goods including inflammable material. The owners will have to bear heavy loss it seems.”\nWhile the Fire fighters to conduct fire extinguishing operation has to broke the wall on the rear side of the godown to control the fire from all sides, said a fire official. The fire was brought under control by 3pm and doused around 4pm. The cause of the fire is not yet known. While the Deonar dumping ground fire was doused within half an hour. Two fire engines and three water tankers been rushed to the spot to douse the fire. No casualty had been reported over there." ]

[ "A fire broke out at the Deonar dumping ground on Monday afternoon leading to toxic fumes emanating from the garbage dump. Eight fire engines and seven water tankers were sent to the spot to bring the fire under control.After efforts by the fire department, the fire was brought under control and the cooling procedures were on, said the fire department officials. The dumping ground was caught in a massive fire in 2016 that had led to a large potion of the city covered in toxic plumes.Nine scrap dealers were arrested by the police in connection with the fires that broke out at the Deonar dumping ground on two occasions - once on January 27 and again on March 20 in 2016. The incidents had called for environment friendly and technological methods of dealing with trash generated in the city of Mumbai. In 2016, the smoke from Deonar, Asia's oldest and largest garbage dump, was visible from space, according to NASA images that were released days after the fire that was visible from across Mumbai.An inquiry by the police had found that the nine scrap dealers, with warehouses close to the dumping ground, were responsible for the fires. The accused were charged with negligence and causing damage to public property among other charges. In both instances when the fire broke out at the Deonar dumping ground in 2016, the fire brigade took over a week to douse the fire. As a result of which residents living across Central Mumbai were exposed to the thick plumes of smoke for days. In February, schools around the dumping yard were shut for days due to the air pollution.The fire department is yet to narrow down on the possible cause of fire on Monday. Earlier this month the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had tabled a proposal to build a boundary wall around the dumping ground for a budget of Rs 8 crore to prevent such incidents which are often caused by unauthorized activities around the dumping ground.", "THANE: A major fire broke out at a warehouse in here in which at least four godowns were gutted, police said. The incident took place in Bhiwandi's Mankoli.\nThe cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained. More than six fire tenders rushed to the spot to douse the blaze.\nThane: Four godowns gutted in a fire which broke out at a warehouse in Bhiwandi's Mankoli; more than six fire tenders present at the spot #Maharashtra pic.twitter.com/KAeUnROLHH — ANI (@ANI) February 3, 2018\nOn January 31, as many as 16 scrap godowns were gutted in another massive fire that broke out in the industrial Bhiwandi township of the district.\nHowever, no injury or casualty was reported in the blaze, according to officials. The fire broke out in the Gayatri Nagar locality where a few huts also suffered damages in the mishap.\nToday's incident took place almost a month after the devastating Kamala mills fire tragedy that claimed lives of 14 people.\nOn December 29, a massive fire had broken out at Kamla Mills Compound in the Lower Parel locality of Mumbai killing 14 people and injuring another 30.\nJust a week after the Kamala mills mishap, another fire was reported from Cinevista studio in east central Mumbai's Kanjurmarg.", "Firefighters try to control fire at a warehouse in Mankoli village in Bhiwandi on Saturday. (PTI Photo) Firefighters try to control fire at a warehouse in Mankoli village in Bhiwandi on Saturday. (PTI Photo)\nIn the second fire in four days in Bhiwandi, more than 15 godowns were gutted Saturday, taking total godowns gutted this week to 38. The fire had not been completely doused till last reports came in. There was no casualty in both incidents.\nOn Saturday morning, a fire broke out in a godown complex in Mankoli region, spreading to scrap godowns first and reached the electronics yard, said sources.\n“We have 25 fire tankers to douse the fire and it’s still raging. It is because of the electronics and other flammable items stored here. There has been massive damage,” said a source in the fire department. He added, “Bhiwandi, Narpoli, Thane and Kalyan divisions have all sent their fire tankers.”\nPolice said the cause of the fire had not been ascertained yet. “We can assure that no one was hurt, as people were evacuated before the fire spread. Once it is doused, we shall start investigating as to what caused the fire,” said an officer in the Bhiwandi police.\nFor all the latest Mumbai News, download Indian Express App", "A major fire broke out at a warehouse in Bhiwandi's Mankoli, Thane.Four godowns have been destroyed in the fire, news agency ANI reported.More than six fire engines are present at the spot to bring the situation under control.Bhiwandi city in the Thane district of Maharashtra has the largest number of Power looms in the country.This is the second such incident reported from Bhiwani within a week. On January 31, as many as 16 scrap godowns were gutted in a fire in the Gayatri Nagar locality in Bhiwandi. A few huts also suffered damages in the mishap.(Further details awaited)", "RAYAGADA: Property worth more than Rs 40 lakh was gutted after a major fire broke out in the camp godown at 4th Battalion of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) here on Friday night.\nCRPF sources said though the exact reason is still unclear, it is suspected that the fire was caused due to an electric short circuit. The mishap occurred at around 1 am on Friday while all the inmates were asleep. The incident came to light only after some staff witnessed a blaze in the godown early in the morning and raised an alarm.\nHowever, till then, a huge quantity of articles, including dress materials and blankets meant for distribution under civic action programmes, tyres, computers and other items of jawans had been reduced to ashes. It took nearly two hours for the fire tenders to douse the flames, said Manoj Kumar Sicon, Second-in-Command, CRPF. On being informed, CRPF DIG B K Sharma and Rayagada SP Rahul PR on Saturday visited the spot.", "Rayagada: A major fire broke out at the camp of Central Reserved Police Force (CRPF) camp in Rayagada gutting properties worth lakhs.\nReportedly, the fire mishap occurred at around 1 am on Saturday while it took nearly for local fire tenders to douse the blaze.\nAccording to reports, fire broke out at a room of the godown in the camp and the flames engulfed the entire godown damaging several articles of the jawans stored in the godown.\nThough the exact reason of the mishap is yet to be ascertained, it is suspected that the fire was caused due to an electrical short circuit.", "MUMBAI: A fire broke out at an industrial estate in suburban Mulund late night today with officials of the BMC Disaster Control Room stating that fire-fighting operations were currently underway.\nA Control Room official said that the there were no report of injuries to anyone, adding that eight fire engines and an equal number of water tankers had been deployed to douse the fire.\n\"The fire erupted at some industrial shops in Shanti Agency in Mulund West around 9.00 pm. The cause of the fire is not yet known,\" an official said.\nMeanwhile, in neighbouring Thane, firefighters continued their efforts to bring under control a raging fire at a godown in Bhiwandi's Mankoli Naka area.\nFire teams from Bhiwandi, Ulhasnagar, Badlapur and Kalyan were engaged in the fire operations since 3am today, officials said.\nThere are no casualties, officials said, adding that it could take some more time to douse the flames.", "Visuals of fire at Shanti Industrial State in Mumbai’s Mulund. Visuals of fire at Shanti Industrial State in Mumbai’s Mulund.\nA major fire broke out at Shanti Industrial State situated in Mumbai’s Mulund area on Saturday night. The fire, which broke out at floor one of the building, has now spread to the second floor.\nPTI quoted a BMC Disaster Control Room official as saying that there were no report of injuries to anyone, adding that eight fire engines and an equal number of water tankers had been deployed to douse the fire.\n“The fire erupted at some industrial shops in Shanti Agency in Mulund West around 9.00 pm. The cause of the fire is not yet known,” an official said.\nVisuals of fire at Shanti Industrial State in Mumbai’s Mulund. Visuals of fire at Shanti Industrial State in Mumbai’s Mulund.\nMeanwhile, another fire broke out at a godown in Bhiwandi’s Mankoli Naka area in neighbouring Thane. The firefighters continued their efforts to bring under control the raging fire.\nFire teams from Bhiwandi, Ulhasnagar, Badlapur and Kalyan were engaged in the fire operations since 3 am today, officials said. There are no casualties, officials said, adding that it could take some more time to douse the flames.\n(With PTI inputs)\nFor all the latest Mumbai News, download Indian Express App\n© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd", "A truck parked outside caught fire, which spread to the godown. (Express Photo by Praveen Khanna) A truck parked outside caught fire, which spread to the godown. (Express Photo by Praveen Khanna)\nAbout 40 days ago, an AAP councillor had warned the South Delhi Municipal Corporation commissioner and Delhi Police commissioner about plastic factories in the area, which were not following rules and could lead to a major fire. AAP councillor from Chirag Delhi, Pooja Jakhar, had written a letter on April 18, in which she warned that there can be a fire in her ward. Barely 40 days later, a blaze broke out in a warehouse in south Delhi’s Malviya Nagar, which falls in Jakhar’s ward, at a rubber godown.\nALSO READ | Malviya Nagar blaze: IAF chopper called in during blaze, fire officers say had it under control\nShe had stated in the letter that there had been several fire incidents in Panchsheel Vihar in the past two years, posing a serious threat to life and property due to proliferation of plastic factories, garages, and ghee and oil godowns operating in the area without following any precautionary measures. “There are several kabadiwalas in the region with huge godowns. There are also kitchens of restaurants who use gas cylinders but do not maintain any precautionary measures,” the letter stated.\nALSO READ | Malviya Nagar blaze: For Khirki residents, a long and sleepless night\nSouth DMC spokesperson said they had no information of such a warehouse running in Malviya Nagar, as it was illegal. “We can only take action if the warehouse would have taken licence from us or approached us to pay conversion or other charges.”\nFor all the latest Delhi News, download Indian Express App", "A truck parked outside caught fire, which spread to the godown. (Express Photo by Praveen Khanna) A truck parked outside caught fire, which spread to the godown. (Express Photo by Praveen Khanna)\nEvacuated when a fire broke out, residents of Khirki Extension spent a sleepless Tuesday night, guessing if it was safe to return home. With the godown of Maxwell Pvt Ltd spread across one acre, dozens of calls went out to the police control room and fire department when the fire broke out. Rubina Lawrence said she left her house and spent the night at her mother’s place next block. “We felt the flames would reach our homes. We were asked to move to a safer place.” Another resident, Dr Satish Malik, said, “I took my family to a nearby park. When I realised that the fire won’t be brought under control anytime soon, we headed to a friend’s place in Saket. But my son and I made several trips to our locality to check what had happened.”\nALSO READ | Malviya Nagar blaze: IAF chopper called in during blaze, fire officers say had it under control\nPresident of the area RWA Roop Singh said most residents were unaware there was a rubber material godown there. Police said 13 buildings, a school and a gym had to be evacuated for safety reasons. Medical teams from nearby hospitals were kept on standby.\nALSO READ | Malviya Nagar fire: Councillor had flagged illegal godowns last month\nFor all the latest Delhi News, download Indian Express App", "At least 10 people were killed on Wednesday when a fire broke out in a firecracker godown in Telangana’s Warangal Rural district, police said.\nFire fighting personnel were at 1.30 pm still trying to douse the blaze in the godown near Kotalingala village, about 135 km from Warangal town.\nAbout 15 people were reported to be inside when the fire broke out, the police said.\nWitnesses said they heard huge blasts prior to the fire.\nFive injured people were shifted to the MGM Hospital in Warangal town.\nThe cause of the fire was being ascertained.", "The Indian Air Force (IAF), through its 'Bambi Bucket' operation helped in containing a major fire which broke out in a rubber godown in south Delhi's Malviya Nagar area, an official statement said today.\nCooling operations are underway at the factory.\nA dense plume of smoke billowed from a truck and a godown in Khirki Extension area last night, causing panic among locals.\nThe city police has arrested Sanjay Saini, owner of the godown, in the incident.\n\"Around midnight, a request was received at HQ Western Air Command for containing a fire at Malviya Nagar. A MLH class helicopter airborne from Sarsawa did a recce and landed at Palam. Thereafter, the helicopter got airborne with bambi bucket to contain the fire,\" the statement by the IAF said.\nThe helicopter filled water from Yamuna reservoir and poured it over the site.\n\"This had to be repeated thrice to contain the fire. This was the first time the bambi bucket operation was done in an urban situation wherein the nitty gritties of drop are very precise, owing to high rises around and chances of collateral damage,\" the statement said.\nThe operations picked up this morning wherein a helicopter flown by Wing Commander Pradeep Bhola of the Mighty Armours assisted in dousing the fire, the IAF said.\nApproximately 8,000 litres of water have been used in the operation.\nSo far, 65 fire tenders have been used to contain the blaze, the police said, adding 13 buildings, a school and a gym have been evacuated for safety reasons.", "[India], May 30 (ANI): The Delhi Police arrested the owner of the rubber godown where the fire broke out yesterday in south Delhi's Malviya Nagar.\nThe owner of the warehouse, Sanjay Saini did not have required permissions from the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and no fire safety equipment.\nThe fire broke out at the rubber warehouse in south Delhi's Malviya Nagar locality on Tuesday. It was doused on Wednesday with the help of the Indian Air Force.\nHowever, no causalities were reported in the incident. (ANI)", "A call was received around 11.30 am about the blaze and 21 fire tenders were pressed into service, he said, adding that the fire was doused by 4 pm\nRepresentational Image\nA vacant plot housing 500 slums in the Shahbad Dairy area of Rohini, caught fire, an official from the Delhi Fire Service said. However, no casualties were reported in the incident.\nA call was received around 11.30 am about the blaze and 21 fire tenders were pressed into service, he said, adding that the fire was doused by 4 pm.\nThe fire also triggered multiple cylinder blasts in the area.\nHe said that locals told them that more than 500 shanties were gutted. The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained. As many as 1,000 people have been rendered homeless due to the blaze.\nYesterday, a six-year-old girl was killed in a fire that broke out in slums in the Mansarovar park area which gutted 300 shanties.\nAlso Read: Fire Breaks Out At Amit Shah's Meeting Venue In Uttar Pradesh\nEdited by mid-day online desk, with inputs from PTI\nCatch up on all the latest Crime, National, International and Hatke news here. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates", "[India], July 04 (ANI): At least 10 people were killed after a major fire broke out at a firecracker godown near Koti Lingala Temple in Telangana's Warangal district on Wednesday.\nThe collector of Warangal district confirmed the report and said that four fire tenders were present at the spot to douse the flames.\nThe reason behind the incident is yet to be ascertained.\nMore details are awaited. (ANI)", "According to the Deonar police, the complainant, whose name has been withheld, was sent a friend request by an unknown woman on January 8. (Image for representational purpose) According to the Deonar police, the complainant, whose name has been withheld, was sent a friend request by an unknown woman on January 8. (Image for representational purpose)\nThe Mumbai Police have arrested three people for committing robbery. The trio, along with three others and a woman, used to trap men through Facebook and rob them, said the police. The latest incident was reported in January in Deonar.\nAccording to the Deonar police, the complainant, whose name has been withheld, was sent a friend request by an unknown woman on January 8.\n“The woman started messaging the complainant on social media. To prove that this was not a fake account, she even sent some pictures. Finally, she asked the complainant to meet her in Govandi,” said an officer investigating the case.\nOn reaching the specified spot, the man spotted a woman standing at a distance, said the police.\nAccording to his complaint, as he was approaching her, five to six men pounced on him and started beating him up. “They took his cash, his phone and other valuables,” said the officer.\nThe complainant somehow managed to run away from the spot and lodged a case at the Deonar police station.\n“We had received some other such complaints. Upon investigation, we learnt about three of the gang members, whom we detained.\nThey have accepted the crime and have said they were involved in similar cases across Mumbai. We are just waiting to trap their other friends, including the woman who sent the friend request,” said the investigating officer.\nFor all the latest Mumbai News, download Indian Express App", "The cause of the fire is unknown; however, the police suspect that it may have been a short circuit.\nAccording to reports, the fire broke out at Bhadrakali Fireworks, situated in the Kashibugga area. (Photo: Twitter/ANI)\nWarangal: At least 10 people died and several others were injured after a fire broke out at a firecracker godown in Warangal district of Telangana.\nFour fire tenders were rushed to the spot, news agency ANI reported quoted the district collector.\nThe fire reportedly broke out at Bhadrakali Fireworks, situated in the Kashibugga area.\nSome of the people have suffered severe burns and have been shifted to the MGM Government Hospital, reports said.\nThe cause of the fire is yet to be found; however, the police suspect that it may have been a short circuit.", "MUMBAI: Police have arrested three persons in connection with a robbery in the city last month where the victim was lured into a trap through a Facebook friend request by a woman.\nThe property cell of Mumbai Crime Branch arrested Jabbar Salim Khan (19), Salman Sheikh (37) and Sheikh Shah Shamsuddin (18) in Shivajinagar in suburban Govandi yesterday, a senior police official said.\nHitendra Thakur, the complainant, received a friend request on Facebook from a young woman a month ago.\nThakur accepted the request and the two started chatting online. The woman also sent him her pictures.\nOn January 16, she said she wanted to meet him and asked him to come to a spot near the Indian Oil Company plant in Govandi.\nWhen Thakur reached there, five-six persons surrounded him and beat him with cricket bat, stumps, sticks and an iron rod.\nThey took the jewellery and other valuables worth Rs Rs 5.92 lakh which he was carrying, and fled.\nA case of robbery was registered with Deonar police, and the Crime Branch started a simultaneous probe, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Detection) Dilip Sawant.\nWhile three persons were arrested yesterday, police have identified other members of the gang including the woman who lured Thakur through social media, and further probe is on, the DCP said.", "Acting on a tip-off, the police laid a trap and caught the duo in the Wagle Industrial Estate in Thane on Wednesday Acting on a tip-off, the police laid a trap and caught the duo in the Wagle Industrial Estate in Thane on Wednesday\nPolice have arrested three persons in connection with a robbery in Mumbai last month where the victim was lured into a trap through a Facebook friend request by a woman. The property cell of Mumbai Crime Branch arrested Jabbar Salim Khan (19), Salman Sheikh (37) and Sheikh Shah Shamsuddin (18) in Shivajinagar in suburban Govandi on Friday, a senior police official said.\nHitendra Thakur, the complainant, received a friend request on Facebook from a young woman a month ago. Thakur accepted the request and the two started chatting online. The woman also sent him her pictures. On January 16, she said she wanted to meet him and asked him to come to a spot near the Indian Oil Company plant in Govandi. When Thakur reached there, five-six persons surrounded him and beat him with cricket bat, stumps, sticks and an iron rod. They took the jewellery and other valuables worth Rs Rs 5.92 lakh which he was carrying, and fled.\nA case of robbery was registered with Deonar police, and the Crime Branch started a simultaneous probe, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Detection) Dilip Sawant. While three persons were arrested on Friday, police have identified other members of the gang including the woman who lured Thakur through social media, and further probe is on, the DCP said.\nFor all the latest India News, download Indian Express App", "Waterlogging had been reported from 41 locations in Mumbai and suburbs on Monday night. Express Waterlogging had been reported from 41 locations in Mumbai and suburbs on Monday night. Express\nWithin days of taking charge as Additional Municipal Commissioner, Vijay Singhal Wednesday pulled up storm water drains department of the BMC, holding it responsible for incidents of waterlogging that took place at 41 locations Monday night. Singhal issued a show-cause notice to Laxman Vhatkar, chief engineer of the department, for failing to issue directions to start up the Britannia pumping station during the heavy rains for about an hour Monday night.\nBritannia pumping station on Reay Road, which was inaugurated by Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray last year, is supposed to automatically start functioning on days when high tide is predicted. On days when the city receives heavy rainfall, officials manning the station are supposed to manually start the pumps. “There should have been better coordination between the officials in the department. If the Britannia pumping station had been started on time, there would have been fewer cases of waterlogging and the water would have receded much faster,” said a senior official.\nSinghal also said the storm water drains department had failed to complete work on the Gazdarbund pumping station in Khar West within the stipulated time and has sought an explanation. “Municipal Commissioner Ajoy Mehta had given a deadline of May 31 to ensure the Gazdarbund pumping station is functional this monsoon. However, even two weeks after the deadline, the work is yet to be completed,” said the official. Despite several calls and messages, neither Vhatkar nor Singhal could be reached for a comment.\nAfter the floods of 2005, the civic body had taken up construction of eight pumping stations under the Brihanmumbai Storm Water Drain (BRIMSTOWAD) project in order to increase the capacity of the drainage system. Among the eight pumping stations, three — Gazdarbund in Khar, Mogra Nullah in Santacruz and Mahul Creek in Chembur — are yet to be completed.\nThe city received an average of 56 mm of rainfall between 9.30 pm and 10.30 pm Monday. The disaster management cell reported complaints of waterlogging from 14 locations in the city, six from the eastern suburbs and 21 locations from the western suburbs. Apart from Hindmata, Shivaji Park, Dharavi, Gandhi Market, Parel and Sion in south Mumbai, complaints of waterlogging also poured in from Govandi, Chembur, Kalina and Deonar in the eastern suburbs and Malad, Goregaon, Vile Parle, Borivali, Kandivli, Bandra and Santacruz in the western suburbs.\nFor all the latest Cities News, download Indian Express App", "Piled-up garbage at Shanivarpeth. Arul Horizon Piled-up garbage at Shanivarpeth. Arul Horizon\nThe last week’s fire at the garbage depot in Uruli Devachi, along with the non-functional processing plants, have turned the city into a huge dumping ground, with heaps of garbage in every corner.\nThe civic administration, however, claims to have the situation under control. “We are working hard to get the city clean by collecting and disposing the waste at the bins across city. There is a backlog of 500 tons of waste,” said Suresh Jagtap, joint municipal commissioner and incharge of solid waste management department.\nHe added that the civic administration has already started segregation of the waste collected at the bins for easier disposal. “The wet garbage is being sent to the bio-gas plants, while dry waste is being disposed off in the facilities available,” he said.\nPointing out that there are various areas across the city, from where waste still needs to be lifted, he said, “The civic staff would work round the clock to ensure the waste does not spill over in open and on streets.”\nMeanwhile, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) officials said the fire that broke out at dumping site Uruli Devachi is being brought under control and all possible steps are being taken to ensure that it does not happen again. “The civic administration have deployed fire tenders at the site. The fire has been brought under control, but smoke continues to emanate from the site,” said a civic official.\nRecently, the residents of Uruli Devachi village had protested against the civic body for continuing disposal of waste at the dumping site in the village, despite promising to stop it. They had also sought construction of two water tanks in the village. However, none of their demands have been met till now.\nThe civic body had, a few years ago, released funds for construction of roads and other development works in the village, which included laying a water pipeline. The pipeline project was proposed after it was found that the village ground water has been polluted by the dumping depot. However, villagers claimed that nothing constructive has been done yet.\nThe state government had also recommended inclusion of Uruli Devachi and Phursungi villages within the civic jurisdiction, which the villagers had opposed.\nFor all the latest India News, download Indian Express App now", "A house was completely gutted in fire at Kumthol, Sattari today. Loss to the tune of Rs 10 lakh has been reported due to the fire including gold worth Rs 3 lakh", "The charred remains of the godown The charred remains of the godown\nAfter a 14-hour firefighting operation, as the Delhi Fire Service flashed a message around 7 am that the blaze in Malviya Nagar had been “controlled”, they were told to leave since an Indian Air Force helicopter was being brought in to douse the blaze. But DFS chief G S Misra claimed that the fire had already been controlled by then. “While our officers were planning to conduct a cooling operation after controlling the fire, a sudden splash of water from 80 feet — despite providing help — also spread the fire due to the wind of the chopper. The chopper arrived around 8 am,” said Misra.\n“The fire was extinguished using 8 lakh litres of water, 40 fire tenders and 150 firefighters, and was re-extinguished by 7,500 litres of water through helicopter,” he said. The helicopter made three sorties to refill the water.\nThe fire broke out on Tuesday evening in a rubber godown, which was allegedly running illegally in a residential locality. There was no causality, though rubber sheet worth crores were gutted, officers said.\nALSO READ | Malviya Nagar blaze: For Khirki residents, a long and sleepless night\nMisra claimed they were not consulted before the chopper was called in. “Bambi choppers are useful where fire engines cannot reach. We never suggest such an operation in residential areas because the wind from the chopper can spread the fire,” said Misra.\nDistrict Disaster Management Authority (south Delhi) chairperson Amjad Tak said the decision to contact IAF was taken Tuesday night, but the operation was not carried out then as it was dark.\nWhile he did not comment on whether DFS was kept in the loop, he said, “The larger issue is that the fire was contained without any casualty. The fire department did a wonderful job. They were at the frontline, braving the fire and the heat till the end. We needed a coordinated effort to douse the fire and this became a learning lesson. We now know that aerial assistance can be sought, but has to be done during the day,” Tak, who is also the district magistrate of the South district, said.\nALSO READ | Malviya Nagar fire: Councillor had flagged illegal godowns last month\nDCP (South) Romil Baaniya said the decision to use a chopper was taken in consultation with all agencies concerned. “It was a joint decision, and was taken by DDMA,” said Baaniya.\nDelhi Police has registered a case under IPC sections 285 (negligent conduct with respect to fire or combustible matter) and 336 (act endangering life or personal safety of others), and arrested the godown owner, Sanjay Saini. Police said they are investigating how the godown was running in a residential area, and have approached the civic agency.\nDFS sources said the fire started from a truck parked in the godown at Khirki Extension of Malviya Nagar. The first call was made at 4.47 pm on Tuesday and at least two fire tenders were rushed to the spot. “They had almost put out the fire when a sudden dust storm spread the blaze. Initially we used foam but that didn’t work so we had to rely on water,” said a DFS officer.\nFor all the latest Delhi News, download Indian Express App", "Blast on location in Wai as elaborate war sequence goes horribly wrong, cast and crew of period drama escape unhurt\nAkshay Kumar\nAkshay Kumar has been shooting for Kesari, which is based on the 1897 Battle of Saragarhi, in Wai over the past four months. The unit of the period drama was in for a shock yesterday when a massive fire broke out on the location in the early evening.\nA source says, \"Anurag Singh [director] was filming a war sequence on location when one of the bombs, being used for the scene, exploded. Within a matter of seconds, the entire set was gutted. Most of the lighting equipment and cameras were lost in the fire. Fortunately, not a single person of the 100-member-strong unit was hurt.\"\nKesari set gutted in Wai\nKumar, who usually shoots through the day in Wai and flies back to Mumbai on his chartered chopper in the evenings, had left for the day around 3.30 pm. \"None of the primary actors were required for the shoot. Akshay filmed his portions by late afternoon and then the director proceeded to can the war sequence with the additional artistes,\" adds the source.\nWith the set now destroyed in the fire, the team has the challenge of recreating the Gulistan Fort — one of the key sites of the battle. \"Since a 10-day shoot is yet to be covered, a new set will need to be recreated. Though it's too early to say, the makers are now considering building the set in Film City in Mumbai.\"\nConfirming the news, the police officials of Satara said, \"The fire department of Bhuinj and those of surrounding areas were alerted [about the incident]. By evening, the fire was brought under control.\"\nCatch up on all the latest entertainment news and gossip here. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates", "BHOPAL: About 500 coolers were gutted in a fire at Deepak Enterprises, a cooler shop at Vijay Market in BHEL Kalibari area, which falls under Govindpura police station. The incident occurred on Monday. Short circuit is believed to be main reason behind fire, according to police.\nAjay Lakhani, owner of Deepak Enterprises, said, “My shop was not insured. The loss may run up to Rs 10 lakh as nearly 500 coolers have been gutted in fire. A private water tanker was passing through my shop. I called it and told driver to douse the fire. It was timely initiative, which prevented fire from spreading to other shops. Otherwise, it would have been more disastrous.”", "Mumbai : Coming down heavily on the BJP-Sena government, both in centre as well as in corporation, Asaduddin Owaisi, AIMIM party president, on Sunday alleged that the ruling party’s have failed to facilitate the Muslim citizens of the city. The party will be contesting from 50 seats across the city for the civic polls.\nThe All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen party’s chief demanded an allocation of funds upto Rs7.700 crore to be made for developing the city’s Muslim wards. “Muslims represent around 21 per cent of total populations of wards in BMC. If the budget of BMC is Rs 37,000 crore, Rs 7700 crore should have been allotted for development of muslims,” Owasi said. Addressing a public rally in Byculla, Owaisi said, “Despite having a budget of Rs 37, 000 crore for this year, the civic body has failed to use the funds appropriately. Many schools and hospitals in Mumbai are in poor condition. The government has fooled us by making huge promises and failing to fullfil them.”\nTaking a dig at the Samajwadi Party, Owaisi quipped saying that the party’s group leader in the civic body, Rais Shaikh, has failed to develop his constituency (Govandi) despite being in power for 10 years. “The infrastructual condition of Govandi is in a sad state. The councillor has even failed to address issues of common people and is expecting to win from byculla constituency for the upcoming polls. The party has always claimed to be a secular political party, however, its councillors have failed to perform their duties.”\nSeeking to strike a chord with the muslim voters for the upcoming civic polls, Assauddin owaisi, commented on the controversial shivaji maharaj memorial project, Owaisi said that the planners have forgot to acknowledge the sacrifices of Muslims who contibuted to Shivaji’s most of the victories. Owaisi said,”We do not oppose spending of Rs 3600 crore for construction or a memorial. But while PM was talking about the great deeds of Shivaji, why did he forgot to mention the Muslims who were a part of his army,” Owaisi added.", "The three accused, who were targeting those peeing in public, had not surrendered their ID cards and were using those to extort money\nThe three former clean-up marshals in police custody. Pic/Rajesh Gupta\nThe Vikhroli police arrested three former clean-up marshals of the BMC yesterday for extorting money from motorists who would stop on the Eastern Express Highway to urinate.\nThe police said the accused had not surrendered their identity cards to the security agency and were using the same to extort money.\nThe accused - Imran Mubarak Shaikh (28), Naved Shaikh (28) and Arbaaz Ansar (21) - are residents of Govandi and have been sent to judicial custody for seven days. One of their associates, identified as Ganesh, fled from the spot when the police swooped down on the trio. Officers have recovered Rs 900 from them.\nHighway extortion\nThe police said that on June 12 they received a complaint from a tempo driver, Dilip Sawant, saying that four men claiming to be clean-up\nmarshals had taken Rs 2,500 from him.\nSawant added that he had stopped near a dumping ground to urinate when the four men approached him. They flashed their ID cards and demanded Rs 1,000 from him for urinating in public. When he refused to pay, the group argued with him. After a heated altercation, the accused dug into his pockets and took Rs 2,500.\nFollowing the complaint, the police started patrolling the spot, and on the second day, they arrested the trio, found loitering suspiciously on the highway.\nMore complaints\nThe accused told the police that they were working with Hunter Security Force, hired by BMC for Chembur and Govandi. The agency had sacked them after receiving a series of similar complaints against them.\nSenior Inspector Sridhar Hanchate said, \"We suspect that the accused are involved in more such cases. Though we have not received other complaints, there are chances that many would have paid these guys.\"\nRs 900 Amount recovered from the trio", "Thick smoke engulfs the area where a major fire broke out at Agarwal industries in Patancheru, near Hyderabad on Tuesday | Express Photo\nHYDERABAD: A major fire broke out at Agarwal rubber industry at Patancheru in Sangareddy district in the early hours of Tuesday resulting in a estimated property loss of `40 crore. However, there were no reports of casualties.\nLocated along NH 65, Agarwal rubber industry was burnt to ashes after a suspected short circuit caused the fire leading to the destruction of rubber based raw material and finished products. Thick smoke enveloped the industry due to the intensity of the flames causing major panic among the people in the locality.\nFire control room received the fire call at around 2.40am and nearly 10 fire tenders were pressed into service. It took more than ten hours for the fire to be brought under control. However, the fumes continued till late in the night.\n‘’According to eyewitness, the mishap was a result of two live wires colliding due to force of wind resulting in short-circuit,” V Papaiah, RFO, Fire Services department said. The place of the mishap was near fire safety system and as the fire spread, the safety system got jammed and stopped working, he added.\nMeanwhile, Home Minister Nayani Narsimhareddy visited the spot and assured help from the government to the industry as there were 2,500 families who were directly or indirectly depended on the factory.\nIncrease in pollution levels\n‘‘There is a visible increase in pollution levels. Locals may face irritation in eyes and nose due to suspended particulate matter,” said Girish Bhadra, PCB official, Ranga Reddy.", "At least two persons were killed and two injured in an explosion at the ordnance factory here on Thursday morning, police said.\nThe explosion, the cause of which is not yet known, occurred in the Ministry of Defence’s Ordnance Factory Dehu Road (OFDR), in Khadki area of the city, around 9.30 a.m., said an official of Khadki Police Station.\nTwo persons, believed to be workers shifting some explosive material, perished in the blast.", "Rats consumed 34 kg of drugs - believe it or not, this is what the Mumbai Police has come up with three years after narcotics worth Rs 3.4 crore went missing from the customs godown in Sewri in 2014. The police have now closed the case by filing an 'A summary' (classifying the case as true, but undetected).\nThe stolen drugs were part of a nearly 200-kg stash of party drug ketamine that the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) had seized from Andheri in June 2011, in the Konduskar case, in which Abhijeet Konduskar of Konduskar Travels was arrested along with others for illegal drug trade. The police had seized a total of 1,000 kg ketamine from Mumbai and Sangli.\nAlso read: Mumbai: Cops bust drug factory at Palghar, seized heroine, ecstasy worth Rs 40 crore\nThe drugs were stolen from a customs godown in Sewri in 2014\nUnder the cops' noses\nThe contraband seized in Mumbai was kept in the Nanavati godowns, where the central enforcement agencies keep their seized and confiscated goods. The godown is located right opposite Sewri police station. According to the FIR filed in 2014, of the 20 sealed packets of seized ketamine, seven were found to be torn and considerably lighter. The stolen drugs are worth R3.4 crore on the international market.\n\"On June 17, 2014, a DRI officer and an additional magistrate had visited the godown. They found that while 13 packets were intact, the weight of ketamine in the remaining seven was less. The packets were torn and 34.14 kg was found stolen,\" Purshottam Nimje, senior customs officer, had stated in the FIR lodged under section 380 (theft in dwelling house) of the Indian Penal Code.\nAlso read: Mumbai police pose as journalist to bust gutka racket in Santacruz\nThe Sewri police probed the case from all possible angles but did not find any leads. The police have now filed an A summary to close the investigation.\n\"We have closed the case and filed an A summary in the court. It is believed that rats ate the drugs. If any fresh lead emerges in the future, the case can be reopened and further investigated,\" said Sudhir Navge, senior inspector of Sewri police station.\nIt is unknown whether the investigators looked into the involvement of any drug racket behind the theft or the possibility of an inside job.\nTorn packets\nAnother officer said, \"The complainant party itself had suspected that the drugs were eaten by rats. They had also claimed that the packet seals were intact and the bags were only torn from the bottom. If someone wanted to steal it, they could have taken the entire packet.\"\nA source from the police said that when the force puts forward a proposal to file a final summary to close criminal cases, they have to present in court all the documents pertaining to the efforts taken during investigation. Only after the court is convinced and satisfied is the approval granted to file the closure report.\n34 kg\nQuantity of ketamine stolen\nRs 3.4 cr\nValue of the stolen drugs\nAlso view - Photos: 16 brutal murder cases that shocked the nation", "HYDERABAD: Major fire broke out at the Sanjeeviah park on Friday. Officials suspect the fire was started by an unextinguished cigarette butt thrown on the heaps of dried leaves and garbage piled up for vermicomposting by some walker. It was a second such fire accident in the park in the last six months.\nClose to 8 lakh saplings of 30 different varieties, grown next to the garbage dumps for the purpose of sale, escaped the fire. Had they too caught fire, the HMDA might have incurred a loss of about `50 lakh. The varieties include jasmine, peepal and aloe vera among.\nThe fire broke out at about 1:00 pm near a nursery of the HMDA at Gate No. 2 of the park. At least, three fire-tenders were used to control the fire that reduced all the heaps of garbage to ashes within a few hours. Now on, walkers will not be allowed around the nursery area where the fire broke out, officials said.\n“Frisking was not done earlier and from now on we will do that. There would be more checks done in order to avoid these mishaps. The person who might have thrown the cigarette might not have understood the gravity of the loss that it can inflict,” said B Srinivas, Conservator of Forest and Director, Urban Forestry, HMDA.About two tonnes of garbage, sourced from the nearby Lumbini Park and NTR Park, was kept by the HMDA in the park to harvest vermicompost. But even before the process could be started, the heap of garbage became a heap of ash, the civic officials said.", "At least 10 people were killed and several injured on Wednesday in an explosion in a fireworks factory in Telangana's Kashibugga, according to several media reports.\nThe injured have been shifted to MGM Government Hospital in Warangal, Telangana Today reported.\nDeath toll might rise as rescue operations are underway with four fire tenders in Sri Bhadrakali Fireworks factory on Eumamula Market Yard road, according to the report.\n#SpotVisuals: 10 people dead in fire at a firecracker godown near Koti Lingala Temple, 4 fire tenders present at the spot: Collector, Warangal District pic.twitter.com/Oj5rYsJtoO — ANI (@ANI) July 4, 2018\nAccording to The News Minute, while most of the victims are women, one minor boy also reportedly died in the accident.\nThe explosion was intense and caused cracks on the walls of nearby structures, DNA reported.\nAccording to The Indian Express, factory owner Golapalli Rajkumar said only seven to eight employees were working at the time of the explosion. However, a police official told the newspaper 21 people in the factory were making fireworks when a spark on the raw material exploded. An investigation is on to ascertain the actual cause behind the blast, according to the report." ]

[ "Yugoslavia" ]

[ "Czechoslovak Socialist Republic", "the Socialist Republic of Vietnam", "the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic", "Czech Socialist Republic", "the Czechoslovak Federative Republic", "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics", "Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic", "Belgrade, Yugoslavia", "federal republic", "Sarajevo, Yugoslavia", "the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic", "the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics", "the breakup of the Yugoslav state", "The Yugoslav Wars", "Prime Minister of the Government of the Socialist Republic", "the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic", "What's Your Mama's Name", "National Committee for the Liberation of Yugoslavia", "socialist", "What Yo Name Iz?", "a federal republic", "Republika Srpska", "The Yugoslav passport", "federal parliamentary republic", "Socialist International", "First Federal Republic", "the USSR", "Republic of Slovenia", "Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic", "Russian Democratic Federative Republic", "the Federal Republic of Germany", "Tito" ]

[ "Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode A Better You. About Emily Balcetis's TED Talk To get better at anything, you need motivation. But conjuring it up can be tough. Psychologist Emily Balcetis says the key to better motivation is simple — just focus on the finish line. About Emily Balcetis Emily Balcetis is a Professor of Psychology at New York University. Her research explores how small differences in perception can have major consequences. By becoming aware of our biases, Balcetis believes we can work to overcome them." ]

[ "Some challenges feel insurmountable. But psychologist Emily Balcetis says the solutions are often right in front of our eyes. This week, as part of our annual series on personal growth and reinvention, Emily explains how we can harness our sight to affect our behavior. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.", "Many idioms in English draw a connection between what we see and what we do. We're told, \"Keep your eye on the prize.\" \"Set your sights high.\" \"I saw that coming.\" Emily Balcetis, a psychology professor at New York University, knows that there's a deep truth to these sayings. As she shows in her book Clearer, Closer, Better: How Successful People See The World, our visual system and our behavior are linked. We can use our sight, she says, to help us make better decisions and reach our goals. \"A hidden secret about goal pursuit is that what we see is really tied to what we think, what we decide and what we do,\" she says. She lays out specific strategies for making the most of our sense of sight. In some situations, it makes sense to narrow our focus. At other times, the key is to change what's in our line of sight, or to make our abstract choices tangible — choices we can see, even feel. This week on Hidden Brain, in the second episode of our annual You 2.0 series, we look at how we can use visual perception to change our reality. Additional Resources: \"From Thought to Action: Effects of Process-Versus Outcome-Based Mental Simulations on Performance\" by Lien B. Pham and Shelley Taylor in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1999. \"See What You Want to See: Motivational Influences on Visual Perception\" by Emily Balcetis and David Dunning in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2006.", "The Olympic motto says it all. It translates to: \"Faster, Higher, Stronger.\" But as athletes come up against the limits of human potential, writer Emily Sohn wondered, how do they continue to improve? The answer, she found, has to do with technology, psychology and access to a range of sports.", "When we met last Thursday, I mentioned that we could talk more about how much to read at a time, and then, of course, I didn't get around to asking you. Sorry about that -- things kept interfering, including one yesterday that rhymes with \"Schmonan Schmo-schmian.\" Here's where we stand. At 10 chapters a week, it will take about 13 weeks to finish the book. That would have us not finishing it until the beginning of July. Some of these \"chapters,\" please keep in mind, are only two or three pages long -- they are more like \"bits.\" I would personally prefer to go a wee tad faster, but I don't want to bump a lot of people off the train. If we stuck with ten chapters this week (because of the short notice) but bumped up to 15 starting next week, we could finish the book in about the second week of June instead. For me, this solves a few problems I see with the ten-chapter pace. First, I think a fair number of you are already reading faster than this; I'm concerned those people will get bored. Second, it means that people who declined to participate in the reading of this particular book will not get to try the book club until July. (\"You should have picked a shorter book, then, doofus.\" I hear you.) So let me pose the question this way: What do you think of fifteen bits instead of ten? In my new hardback edition, taking on chapters 21 to 35 for next week would be right around 60 pages, in pretty big type, with illustrations. It's not a huge amount of reading. But as I said, I don't want to derail you, either. Let's talk about it in the comments.", "The rush of victory or crush of defeat in the Olympics can flash by very quickly. But if you slow those moments down, there's a lot to learn about human behavior.", "While much focus goes to Supreme Court nominations, the GOP also currently has a lot of power to appoint judges to lower courts throughout the country. The Trump administration is now getting judges confirmed at a faster rate than previous presidencies. Here & Now&#8216;s Robin Young speaks with Emily Bazelon (@emilybazelon), staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and a fellow at Yale Law School, about the vacancies being filled and what it means for the GOP.", "To my fellow morning commuter, I have to be at work and sitting at my desk with my glasses on and mouse warm in hand by 8 a.m. I understand the pressure of a late ringing alarm clock and I also push the pedal a little harder around 7:45 a.m. The most important part of my day is that I get to my desk on time and in one piece. I expect that this is also a mission very close to your heart, because you are so clearly willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen. I am, however, not at all impressed with your Fast and Furious antics. Please stop angrily swerving around me, leaving 5 inches of safe cushion between us and a collision. Because no matter how far ahead you think you are getting, there is always a stoplight up ahead and I will most likely meet you there. Are we really in a race to get to the red light? Is it really worth risking the cost of a potential accident to be the first person waiting for the light to turn green? No one is thinking, \"Wow, look at that daredevil stud,\" as you whiz by me and suddenly swerve into my lane. Nope, instead I am thinking how self-centered you must be. The next time you are the first to arrive at the red light and you sit there revving your engine so that you can get to the next stop before anyone else, remember the look I'm giving is not of admiration but of disdain. Love, The Woman Who Knows How To Drive Erica Molitor is a 28-year-old Milwaukee resident who excels in both complaining and coloring contests.", "Here's a link to the latest podcast where I talk more with NPR's David Kestenbaum about the advice Mark Rippetoe has for getting fit. From the responses to my blog post, I can tell there are many devotees to Mr. Rippetoe out there. Not surprising because he seems to really know his stuff. It seems like the biggest hurdle to overcome in changing your habits is finding that initial motivation to get you started in a new direction. The good news is that after a while it gets easier and just becomes a part of your lifestyle. When I signed up for the marathon in San Diego, I was motivated by the fact that I told all my friends that I was going to run it and I didn't want to end up not finishing. This fear of looking like a moron got me out there. And the more workouts I did, the easier it was to keep it up (and yes I ran the whole thing and finished!). Now I think I need to find a new kind of motivation because this tactic failed me recently. Last summer I signed up for a 8K in Fairfax, Virginia, but my training didn't go very well (or, more like it didn't really happen at all). I finished the race, but had the painful shame of walking about half of the race because I wasn't in very good shape. Will the desire to get rid of my pudge be enough motivation to start following Rippetoe's regimen? I'm still wondering can weight lifting be fun? I don't see a lot of body builders smiling when they're working out. Still, Rippetoe makes a compelling argument for weight training so if it means I'll be a healthier person overall I think I might need to give it a second chance.", "Imagine: You're a huge Dave Matthews fan. As you're going to his band's show Saturday in Hershey, Pa., you see a guy standing by the side of the road next to a bike with a flat tire. Do you stop to help? Well, when you see that it's Dave himself, you certainly do. That's just what happened to Emily Kraus and her boyfriend Joe. Now, you may have heard about all this by now — and about how Dave arranged for Emily and Joe to come backstage before the show and to sit down front during it. He certainly had good reasons to be thankful, since he didn't have a cellphone and they had a car that just happened to already have a bike rack on the back. But have you seen video of Dave telling the story to his fans in Hershey? There's a pretty good clip posted here. Dave launches into the story at about the 55-second mark. He tells it in his own unique way (as one YouTube commenter wonders, \"is he incapable of speaking normally?\"). There's also audio here of a very excited Emily telling the story her way to Philadelphia's 1210 WPHT. We love what she said when she pulled up beside the stranded musician — \"Dave?\" Update at 6:15 p.m. ET. Ford Offers \"Tips For Picking Up Random Rock Icons\": Seeing that Emily was driving one of their cars — a Focus — the communications folks at Ford decided to weigh in. They've sent us \"tips for picking up random rock icons;\" including: -- \"Have your music player loaded with his music.\" -- \"Make sure your car has plenty of legroom.\" -- \"Get the car safely to his venue.\" -- \"Stay well stocked with beverages.\" -- \"Have sure-fire ways to communicate.\" -- \"Carry tire tubes and patch kits.\" And guess, what, the Ford folks say, their Focus can do all that! What a coincidence! One thing we weren't so keen on: Ford suggests stocking a Focus with \"trendy drinks ... whether it's acai juice or squeezed avocado.\" Squeezed avocado?", "On Monday, Norwegian Ole Einar Bjoerndalen came a ski-length away from winning a 13th Olympic medal and becoming the most decorated athlete ever at the Winter Games. The biathlon pursuit Olympic event — cross-country skiing with rifle shooting — is a pretty devious race. The fastest man goes first, and then everyone else in the race tries to catch him before the finish line. And in Monday's competition, Bjoerndalen went first. Just to make clear: Bjoerndalen is 40. The guys chasing him are in their 20s. In one sense, the kids will never, ever catch him, because no one has ever been so good for so long in his sport. Biathlon is often mocked in the United States. Skiing and shooting? Come on. But think of it: Six different Olympics. Seven gold medals. Twelve medals total. If Bjoerndalen had done that on downhill skis, he'd be on every cereal box. In Norway, he sort of is. \"He is very, very, very famous in Norway. In Germany, you wouldn't believe how popular he is. I've heard of at least two or three children named Ole Einar in Germany,\" says Andreas Smith, the biathlon expert for Norwegian broadcasting. He's amazed not just at all the medals but at the way Bjoerndalen approaches the sport. \"He's a perfectionist. His mind is different from everyone else,\" says Smith. \"He's 40 years old, and he's motivated like an 18-year-old.\" Combine that motivation with something that an 18-year-old will never have: a certain mental calm. Remember, this sport isn't just about skiing fast. You have to stop, pull out a rifle and shoot at a target. They literally lower their heart rates so their hands don't shake. They clear their minds. \"You can't have any thoughts in your mind. The only thing you should focus on is to be focused on how to handle the rifle and get a good shot,\" Smith says. At his race in Sochi on Monday, Bjoerndalen was still ahead after the first lap of the course. He pulled out his rifle, lay down on the snow and fired six shots. He hit every one. On the next lap, getting tired, he missed a shot and had to go on a penalty loop. The third time, he missed again. The young guys finally caught up with Bjoerndalen. A French skier named Martin Fourcade hit his targets and took the lead; Bjoerndalen dropped to sixth place. And although he skis faster than anyone else on the course, he couldn't make up the time he lost. In the stands, a grown man with his face painted as the Norwegian flag dropped his head. \"He just missed his shot, it's as easy as that,\" he said. \"Biathlon is tricky that way because you can ski as fast as you want. But if you miss those shots, there's nothing to do.\" As Bjoerndalen walked away from the course, I asked him if the pressure of getting that 13th medal had gotten to him when he aimed his rifle. \"No, no pressure,\" he said. \"I do my job, and I focus on my job, and it was a funny race today.\" Bjoerndalen has a few more races to go in this Olympics, a few more chances to win the 13th medal. But looking forward, he waved his hand and said he doesn't think about it. His mind is clear.", "Looking for a glimmer of hope in the recession? Maybe losing a job can help you become fitter and faster. That's the conclusion of a piece today in the Wall Street Journal (sub. req'd.) that points to improving marathon times across the country in 2009. For example, there's been a 39 percent increase over last year in runners with times good enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon. Jobless marathoners have more time to get into peak condition. Casual runners who once struggled to squeeze in a run after a long workday can train on their own schedule. Elite athletes fresh out of college are training more, too, with job prospects so bleak. What makes all this speedy running particularly notable is that more Americans are entering marathons, which means more novice runners, which should mean slower times.", "\"Missed it by that much\" — that could have been the simple explanation after American skier Robby Kelley lost control just before the finish line in a slalom race in the Alps in Austria on Tuesday night. But after Kelley crashed, thousands of people cheered him on as he hiked back up the hill to finish his run. \"I just want to cross the finish line every time I go,\" Kelley said after the race, in comments relayed by the U.S. Ski Team. \"I basically always hike. It's something I've always done. My parents told me to never give up, so I wanted to cross that finish line.\" Kelley had the finish line in sight on his second run at the Schladming Night Race, but when his skis went sideways after a tight turn, the rest of him followed, sending him airborne before crashing down the mountain. But Kelley, who has skied as part of Vermont-based Redneck Racing and is known for his unique approach to skiing, wasn't done. After his momentum carried Kelley next to the finishing gate, he picked himself up and began sidestepping back up the mountain. And with that, the crowd that had been largely silent upon seeing him crash began cheering for Kelley to reach the gate that he'd missed. \"I'm tired — very tired — but it was worth it!\" Kelley said afterward. \"It was a great feeling to cross the finish line here. This is the best race of the year. I would have liked to be 48 seconds faster than I was, so I'm a little disappointed.\" Kelley, 26, was the top American finisher in the Alpine Skiing World Cup slalom event, with other U.S. skiers either not finishing or failing to reach the race's second run. Today, the Vermont skier's refusal to quit is winning fans far beyond the Alps, after he posted a video of the unusual finish on his Facebook page. \"I am a high school ski coach and I preach to my kids that you NEVER quit,\" one fan wrote. \"Thank you so much for showing such a great example at the highest level!!!! You ROCK...and I hope you crush the rest of the season!\" This isn't the first time Kelley has drawn attention for his unusual style; in 2014, he published a video of himself tackling a local run in Vermont — but in the summer, schussing over grass and ferns, in his ski suit.", "Up until my mid 20's, I was one of those lucky guys who could down a milkshake, burger, and fries and then laugh about how fast my metabolism could burn it away. I never quite made it to the Michael Phelps 10,000 calories a day plan, but I didn't really have to think too hard about staying in shape. The pinnacle of my athletic experience came in 2003 when I ran the Rock and Roll Marathon in San Diego, California. Since then, it's been a slow slide down a few notches on my belt. It's not that I don't want to exercise; I just have a lot going on with my new daddy duties which makes it hard to figure out when to fit it in. Thankfully, my new pudge is nothing too alarming at this point. I haven't had to make any wardrobe changes yet, but I'd like to start this new year by trying to get into some better habits so I can hopefully reverse the trend. Fortunately, my older brother, who is very into fitness and weight training, was able to point me in the right direction. He actually subscribes to more than one muscle magazine. He said the best person to talk to about dropping those extra lbs. is Mark Rippetoe. Rippetoe has literally changed my brother's life. I figure anyone that can do that is worth a call. Click above to hear my conversation with Rippetoe. In my podcast next week I'll be talking over Rippetoe's tips with NPR's David Kestenbaum, but in the meantime if you have a comment on anything he said in the interview, feel free to post.", "Chapter 1 &ldquo;Emily,&rdquo; I said to my sister. &ldquo;When they take your picture, say &lsquo;toenails.&rsquo;&rdquo; &ldquo;Eeuw, why would I say &lsquo;toenails&rsquo;?&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re gross.&rdquo;&#160; &ldquo;Because saying the word moves your lips into a smile,&rdquo; I explained. &ldquo;Which, I might add, you don&rsquo;t know how to do.&rdquo; We were walking down the school hall heading toward the bulletin board where they display the pictures of everyone who wins an award. If you want to be famous, it&rsquo;s the best bulletin board in the school. Every kid at PS 87 has to pass by it at least twice a day. And today they were taking a picture of Emily to put up on display. She had been picked as Reader of the Month&#160;.&#160;.&#160;. again. &ldquo;Hank, you&rsquo;re just jealous because I&rsquo;m getting my picture up on the bulletin board and you&rsquo;re not,&rdquo; Emily said. The annoying thing about Emily is that she&rsquo;s always right. I was jealous. This was the second time she had been picked as Reader of the Month, this time for having finished thirteen books in thirty days. Ask me how many books I&rsquo;ve finished. The answer is not one. I want to read, I really do. But my eyes never seem to make friends with the words on the page. All those letters swim around like fish in a pond. Just once, I&rsquo;d like to win an award and get my picture pinned right in the center of the board. It could be for anything. Like being the best tuna-fish sandwich eater. I&rsquo;m really good at that. Or for falling asleep. I can fall asleep before my eyes are even closed. But no one gives out awards for those things, especially the head of my school, Principal Love. He&rsquo;s got a mole on his cheek that looks just like the Statue of Liberty without the torch. Every time he laughs, it looks like the mole is doing the hula. I bet he wishes they gave out awards for the best mole. When Emily and I reached the bulletin board, my parents were already there. They had come early to be sure they didn&rsquo;t miss taking even one picture of Emily. They have a whole photo album just for Emily and her awards. Their smiles were so big, you could see every one of their teeth, even the yellow ones in the back. &ldquo;Yoo-hoo, kids,&rdquo; my mom shouted. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re over here!&rdquo; My mom always calls out to us as though we can&rsquo;t see her. I don&rsquo;t know why she does that. My eyes are working fine. It&rsquo;s my brain that doesn&rsquo;t work so well. Both my parents were wearing the green buttons our school gives out that say I&rsquo;M A PROUD PS 87 PARENT. I wondered if that meant they were proud of both of us or just Emily.&#160; &ldquo;Oh, look,&rdquo; Emily said. &ldquo;The whole family is here for my special day.&rdquo; &ldquo;Not exactly,&rdquo; I pointed out. &ldquo;If you notice, Cheerio&rsquo;s not here.&rdquo; &ldquo;Hank, Cheerio is a dog.&rdquo; &ldquo;To you. To me, he&rsquo;s my younger furry brother.&rdquo; &ldquo;Well, he shouldn&rsquo;t be here. He doesn&rsquo;t appreciate books.&rdquo; &ldquo;Are you kidding?&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;He loves chewing on them! And the ones he likes the best, he pees on.&rdquo; Principal Love arrived then, his face lighting up when he saw Emily. The mole on his cheek was dancing up a storm. &ldquo;Hello, all you Zipzers!&rdquo; he said with a big grin. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re looking very zippy today.&rdquo; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a special day for Emily,&rdquo; my father said. Principal Love took a key from his pocket and unlocked the glass case protecting the bulletin board. Then he pulled a picture of Emily out of a brown manila envelope. &ldquo;Oh, look,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There are already thumbtack holes in the corners of this picture from the last time we put it up.&rdquo; Emily smiled so big, I thought her face was going to crack in half. All I wanted to do was throw up. Principal Love tacked Emily&rsquo;s picture onto the center of the bulletin board, right under the big black letters that said READER OF THE MONTH. He was careful to use the pinholes that were already there. He&rsquo;d probably get to use them twenty more times before the year was up.&#160; &ldquo;Time for a photo opportunity,&rdquo; he said as he closed the case. &ldquo;Your family certainly doesn&rsquo;t want to forget this proud moment.&rdquo; Maybe the rest of them didn&rsquo;t, but I sure did. My memory is full of proud moments about Emily in school and kind of empty about proud school moments of me. &ldquo;Dad, let me take the picture,&rdquo; I said. I thought that at least taking the picture would give me something to do, rather than just looking like the loser brother standing next to my winner sister. &ldquo;Okay, Hank,&rdquo; my dad said, holding out his phone. &ldquo;You take the picture. And try not to cut off our heads.&rdquo; I left my mom&rsquo;s side and took the phone. As I snapped the photo, I wonde", "Sixty years ago today, Roger Bannister accomplished something humans had only dreamed of decades earlier. As he's described it, the first two laps felt easy, and black-and-white BBC footage of the event corroborates this. He looks at ease, his spikes hardly touching the track before springing another step. When he hit the final lap, the British medical student knew he had to run those last 400 meters in 59 seconds if he was to break the world record. Right before the last straightaway, Bannister sped past his pace runner. He could see the finish line tape, and he could hear the crowd. He leaped toward the finish, his body feeling \"like an exploding flashbulb\" as he fell into the arms of his coaches. 3:59.4. Bannister had become the first human to run a mile in under 4 minutes, shattering all sorts of notions about the limits of human performance. Perhaps just as shocking, that record lasted only six weeks — and subsequent records continued to fall until 1999, when Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco ran the mile in 3:43.13. As we thought about the 1954 feat and how humans keep pushing the limits of what was once thought impossible, we wondered if it made us unique. Have animals, for example, gotten faster? \"The best data-based, short answer to your question is no,\" says Peter Weyand, a Southern Methodist University professor of applied physiology and biomechanics who specializes in the limits of human performance. Specifically, he was referring to a landmark 2008 study by Stanford biologist Mark Denny. Denny looked back at as much as a century's worth of records and found that while the performance of racing horses and greyhounds has stagnated for decades, humans have continued to improve. \"The superficial, easy answer why is that you can only get so much out of selective breeding, and [the horses and dogs] are optimized, and there's nothing more you can do,\" Weyand says. \"Why are humans getting faster? That part is really complicated, and it's only a partially biological phenomenon.\" For example: When Bannister broke the 4-minute mile record, he was running on a track made of crushed cinders and dirt. Modern rubber or synthetic tracks will shave three to four seconds off a runner's time per mile. Performance-enhancing drugs and a whole suite of available supplements — like vitamins — also can give an edge. But much more is at play here, Weyand says. He compares it to Moore's Law, the theory posited by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that the number of \"transistors incorporated in a chip will approximately double every 24 months.\" In other words, an industry driven by strong competition and the promise of large financial gains is going to move faster than nearly all other industries. Essentially what Weyand argues is that human runners are at a similar, special confluence, where competition, rewards and technology are all working together toward a faster human. \"Track and field is a hypercompetitive, professional sport,\" he says. \"You have a large population basis and very substantial economic incentives to improve that have evolved in parallel with advanced means for performance improvement.\" He adds: \"If there are means [to get faster] — legal or not — they are going to be implemented.\" Weyand says that gene doping and prosthetics could prove the next frontier. But when it comes to the mile, something curious has happened in the past 15 years. Hicham El Guerrouj's 1999 performance still stands as the very best. That stagnation, Weyand says, happens to coincide with when the International Association of Athletics Federations and the Olympics started to test for erythropoietin, a popular performance-enhancing drug. So does this mean that humans, like racehorses and dogs, may have reached their biological limit? \"That may be the case, but I'd be hesitant to make that prediction, because you don't know where you might get some other improvements, whether it's through training or equipment or the tracks themselves or other things,\" Weyand says. That's what makes humans different: The number of \"interventions\" that can have an effect on human performance is abundant.", "Dallas Seavey was the first musher to slip under the famed burled arch finish line in Nome, Alaska, winning his second Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race after a 1,000-mile slog from Willow. Seavey, 27, \"ran a blistering pace the last 77 miles\" with his seven-dog team to win the iconic race Tuesday, according to The Associated Press. He swept past four-time champion Jeff King, who was derailed by bad weather, and rival Aliy Zirkle, who finished in second 2 minutes and 22 seconds after Seavey, Alaska Public Media reports. Seavey was the youngest-ever champion when he won the race for the first time in 2012. On Tuesday, his father, two-time champion Dan Seavey, was a few places behind him. Emily Schwing of NPR member station KUAC reports from Nome: \"This year's race has been dominated by rough trail, dramatic injuries and tough weather. There are still more than 50 dog teams spread out along the West coast of Alaska.\" The Weather Channel reports: \"King cited severe winds near Safety, the last checkpoint along the nearly 1,000-mile trail, and told officials he had trouble navigating the trail. \"On Monday, he left the checkpoint in White Mountain with an hour's lead over Zirkle. But the Iditarod website said a gust of wind blew King and his dog team into driftwood. He was able to untangle the team but couldn't get them moving again. \"Winds were gusting about 40 mph and there was blowing snow near Safety. ... \"A warmer-than-average winter in Nome has left a shortage of snow. As a result, crews have been stockpiling snow and dumped it on the dry ground near the finish line during the final preparations for the race's end.\" In approaching the finish line, the Anchorage Daily News reports that Seavey \"jogged beside his sled down Nome's Front Street to help his dogs, one hand on the sled and the other on a ski pole.\" The newspaper adds: \"After crossing the finish line he sat down on the back of his sled and leaned his head on his handlebar, exhausted. \" 'How did you do it?' an Iditarod Insider videographer asked. \" 'What'd I do?' \" 'You just won the Iditarod.' \" 'What? I thought that was my dad behind me. Where's Jeff and Aliy?' \"Seavey and his team broke the race speed record, finishing ... in 8 days, 13 hours, 4 minutes, 19 seconds. He shaved more than five hours off John Baker's 2011 record of 8 days, 18 hours, 46 minutes, 39 seconds.\"", "The paparazzi might be one the most reviled groups in Hollywood -- but that didn't stop Slate contributor Emily Yoffe from trying to join the world of celebrity photographers. Madeleine Brand talks to Yoffe about her experience as a paparazza in Los Angeles, stalking her famous prey in the bountiful hunting grounds of Beverly Hills, Calif. ALEX CHADWICK, host: This is DAY TO DAY. I'm Alex Chadwick. MADELEINE BRAND, host: And I'm Madeleine Brand. It's time now for another visit with the human guinea pig, also known as Emily Yoffe. She's a writer for the online magazine Slate, and Emily takes on unusual or unpleasant tasks and tells us what they're like. You may remember her previous forays into the worlds of lobbying, nude art modeling, beauty pageants, competitive eating, and so many, many more. Well, today she's back with a particularly photogenic human guinea pig experiment. Hi, Emily. Ms. EMILY YOFFE (Columnist, Slate Magazine): Hello. BRAND: Now, you were here in Los Angeles recently and this new task is pretty L.A. centered. Tell us about it. Ms. YOFFE: I spent three days as a paparazzo, running around being a celebrity photographer against the celebrity's wills for the most part. BRAND: Right. So tell me, what did you do? How did you stalk your prey? Ms. YOFFE: There's a little mini mall of very expensive, expensive little mini mall called Two Rodeo. And that was where I spotted my best celebrities. BRAND: So you found one pretty quickly, and it's a guy named Tim Daly. And I have to say, I confess, I don't know who that guy is. Who is he? Ms. YOFFE: He's fabulous. He's the gorgeous Tim Daly. If you saw The Sopranos this season, you've seen him. He plays Christopher's friend. BRAND: A minor character. A minor character. Ms. YOFFE: Yeah. But he's best known as the star of the sitcom Wings. BRAND: Uh-huh. And so you got a shot of him? Ms. YOFFE: Well, I'd been driving around for awhile with my sister. My sister joined me. And we hadn't seen any celebrities and I was getting a little discouraged. So we went to Fred Siegal. BRAND: That's... Ms. YOFFE: A very fancy schmancy clothing store. We got out of the car. My sister said, There's Tim Daly. What added to this was they had gone to college together, so this helped launch my paparazzo career, in that she went over, they hugged each other, and then my sister said, My sister over here is a paparazzo. Could she take your picture? So that was my first shot. What added to the unprofessionality of it was when he agreed, I aimed my camera, pressed the button, and it turned out I'd left my memory card in my printer 3000 miles away in Washington, D.C. So I had to ask Tim to wait while I drove off in search of a memory card. So I don't think that happens to most professional photographers. BRAND: Right. And so who else did you nab? Ms. YOFFE: Well, I ended up back on Two Rodeo when I bagged my biggest celebrities. I saw a bunch of tourists like twittering around like sparrows with a hawk circling, so I knew there's something happening, there's something happening. A door to a very expensive store opens. Russell Crowe, holding his young child with his pregnant wife, comes out. I mean this is A list boffo big time paparazzo spotting. However, given his reputation, I was very afraid if I started snapping he'd punch me in the face. So you know, I was really torn. I didn't know what to do. He walks up to the, you know, main drag of Two Rodeo and sits in a café there, where there is a real paparazzo with a telephoto lens taking his picture. So I said, I'm getting in on this. And I just was scurrying around back and forth, snapping pictures of Russell Crowe. I talked to the paparazzo later. He said that shot, because he was the only real photographer there, was worth $2500. BRAND: That is, Emily, if it's a picture that's in focus. Ms. YOFFE: You know, you're getting awfully picky. I had a snap and shoot. I don't know how to focus. And anyway, do you want him to punch you in the jaw? I was doing my best. The fact that the picture is not in focus I think is irrelevant. You can see that it's Russell Crowe, can't you? BRAND: Yes. That is definitely Russell Crowe. Congratulations. Ms. YOFFE: Thank you. And then as I was leaving to, because the paparazzo got a call and he said, A desperate housewife? The redhead? Alright, I'm off. So we started chasing him to photograph Marcia Cross. In my peripheral vision I see Michael Caine. And that's in focus. BRAND: Okay. Well, you can see that photo and the photo of Russell Crowe and everyone else that Emily Yoffe shot at our website, NPR.org. And you can read the entire article, all of Emily's adventures and misdeeds being a paparazzo at Slate.com Emily Yoffe, the human guinea pig for Slate.com, thank you. Ms. YOFFE: Your welcome.", "Success in athletics is both physical and mental. Dr. Barbara Walker from the Center for Human Performance is in The Front Row with Betsy Ross to discuss brains over brawn.", "Thirty-five years ago in Moscow, working on what he says was \"an ugly Russian\" computer that was frankensteined together with spare parts, Alexey Pajitnov started a side project that has become the second-best-selling video game of all time: Tetris. At the time, Pajitnov was a young developer and programmer whose other interests included a popular puzzle game consisting of twelve shapes that were made up of five square pieces. The object was to create pictures and images using the pentominoes, he explained. His fascination with it was obvious but inspiration for Pajitnov's own game came when he'd finished playing one day and returned the pieces to their box. \"When you try to put [them] back in the box you're in trouble because it's really hard to do that.\" And thus, the idea for Tetris was born. It is simple and yet has proved to be indomitably addictive. Seven brightly colored four-block pieces, tetrominoes, fall from the top of screen. Slowly at first and then faster and faster, as the player rotates the pieces so they create complete lines. When they do, the line vanishes. When they don't, the blocks begin to stack on top of one another until they fill the screen and the game is over. As soon as Pajitnov had finished the prototype, he knew he had an commercial hit on his hands. \"I couldn't stop playing it,\" he said, confessing that at work he'd pretend to be busy but really he was in a Tetris trance. \"Magic is in it,\" he said proudly. Two years later, in 1986, it became the first computer game from the Soviet Union to be released in the West, Engadget reports. Since then it has sold more than 170 million copies around the world, adapting to a vast array of consoles and platforms over the years. In other words, it was and continues to be a commercial juggernaut that has touched lives of hundreds of millions of players. But Pajitnov didn't get rich off of it. At least not right away. In 1984 Russia was still a communist republic within the U.S.S.R. and Pajitnov had little choice in relinquishing ownership of the game to what he described as a \"shady\" government. \"I [granted] the rights for the game for 10 years to my computer center. To my job place,\" he explained in a thick Russian accent. Eventually, he regained the rights sometime in 1995 or 1996 after the Cold War had ended, and maintains them still. Over the intervening years Tetris has evolved. The most recent versions — the Tetris Effect, which on one board allows players to create their own jazz music as pieces fall into place, and Tetris 99, which pits the player against another 98 competitors, Battle Royale-style — debuted last year. Patijov says the ongoing popularity of the rudimentary game among men and women is hard-wired into humans. \"Software and hardware [are] changing dramatically in front of us, but our brains do not,\" he noted. It also appeals to humanity's \"constructive spirit,\" he added. \"You feel that you can create something rather than destroy.\" Happy 35th, Tetris.", "Dallas Seavey won his third Iditarod in four years, crossing under the burled arch in Nome on Wednesday morning. Seavey finished the 1,100-mile sled dog race in eight days, 18 hours, 13 minutes, and six seconds. Emily Schwing of Alaska Public Media reports that Seavey \"made the 22-mile run from Safety, the Iditarod's final stop before the finish line in Nome, in three hours. He finished the race with 10 dogs.\" The Associated Press reports on the scene at the finish line: \" 'It takes a whole team to get any of us here,' [Seavey] told reporters at a finish line ceremony, which was broadcast and live-streamed. Later, he hoisted two of his dogs onto his lap and officials draped the animals with garlands of yellow flowers. \" 'As long as you take care of the dog team [and] make good decisions, good things will happen. Wins are a result of doing what we love,' Seavey said, adding he tried to keep the race fun.\" Seavey's father, Mitch, was in second place as of Wednesday morning. The elder Seavey won the race in 2013 (Dallas finished fourth that year) and in 2004. \"We want to beat each other,\" Dallas Seavey told the Alaska Dispatch News this week when asked about his father. He said they live about five hours apart, adding that while he learned \"how to mush from my dad,\" he also built on things he felt his father did \"that are inefficient.\" NPR interviewed the younger Seavey after he won the race for the first time, in 2012. You can hear that interview here. Seavey pulled into White Mountain around 10 a.m. local time Tuesday where he took a mandatory eight-hour rest before setting off for Nome. Traditionally, mushers who are the first to leave White Mountain go on to win the Iditarod. But last year, a snowstorm blew the leaders out of the race. That opened the door for Seavey, who left White Mountain in third place, to win. He didn't even know he had won last year's race until a cameraman told him. Although he held a 25-mile lead early Tuesday, Seavey said last year's crazy finish would keep him pushing to the end. \"That's way too fresh in my mind to forget about,\" he told The Dispatch News. Seavey, 28, received $70,000 and a new pickup truck for the win. As Schwing reported earlier this month, weather was a factor in making the Iditarod route this year: \"The Iditarod normally starts in Anchorage, but the race committee was forced to relocate the start line to Fairbanks due to poor trail conditions. \"This year's reroute includes a section of trail that doesn't get much winter traffic. Some places have little to no snow coverage, and in at least one spot, there is open water where there should be solid ice.\" The AP reported that a total of 78 mushers began the race, and since then, eight scratched and one was disqualified. Two dogs have died during this year's race. Seavey finished at 4:13 a.m. local time Wednesday morning. \"I want to congratulate Dallas Seavey and his team of four-legged athletes on their third Iditarod victory in four years,\" Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan said in a statement. \"Dallas has ensured that the Iditarod crown stays in the Seavey family for another year.\"", "NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks with Amby Burfoot, lifelong runner and former editor-in-chief at <em>Runner's World</em>, about the super-fast Nike shoes that might give runners an unfair advantage.", "While we continue to ponder a new name for this blog to reflect a broader focus on general health news and developments, it might be worthwhile to check out the recently-released list of the most popular baby names for 2008. This naming business is a tricky one, giving someone (or something) an identity isn't to be taken lightly. When it comes to the blog, we'll be reaching beyond the swine flu to whole host of health-related issues -- from healthy, veggie-eating Swedes to the latest FDA studies to the debate on overhauling the nation's health care system. So we're calling out to you again for some suggestions on what to name this ambitious young blog. Leave your suggestions in the comment box or send them to us here. You can start the creative juices flowing by checking out this YouTube video for a more in-depth look at the hazards of picking the right name: Now onto last year's baby names for some more inspiration: Read More >> According to the Social Security Administration, which offers up lists of the most popular baby names each year stretching all the way back to 1880, Jacob led the pack among newborn boys in 2008 while Emma topped the list among girls. The later was big news -- Emma knocked off Emily, who had held the number one slot for the 12 previous years. Emily finished in third. The AP notes that the name Barack surged 10,126 places but remained well out of the top 1,000 at 2,409th place. You can visit the Social Security Administration's Web site to breakdown the lists in a variety if ways (by state, decade, etc.). Here are the top ten boys and girls names for 2008: Boy Names1. Jacob2. Michael3. Ethan4. Joshua5. Daniel6. Alexander7. Anthony8. William9. Christopher10. Matthew Girl Names1. Emma2. Isabella3. Emily4. Madison5. Ava6. Olivia7. Sophia8. Abigail9. Elizabeth10. Chloe", "The Iditarod Sled Dog race starts Saturday. The normal route takes mushers over mountain ranges and across frozen tundra and sea ice for 1,000 miles. This year, unseasonably warm weather forced a change in the route, but that doesn't mean the level of competition has lightened. The Iditarod normally starts in Anchorage, but the race committee was forced to relocate the start line to Fairbanks due to poor trail conditions. This year's reroute includes a section of trail that doesn't get much winter traffic. Some places have little to no snow coverage, and in at least one spot, there is open water where there should be solid ice. But the race will go on. \"In the Iditarod, it's just full of all the top competitors and so it's really fun to line your team up against all those really great dog teams,\" musher Brent Sass says. Sass is coming to the Iditarod after his recent win in Alaska's other 1,000-mile sled dog race — the Yukon Quest. This year, he'll compete in his third Iditarod. \"It goes to these really remote villages that don't get a lot of traffic from outsiders all year long, so it's really fun to pull into the villages and see the excitement from all the people and the history that the race holds,\" he says. The race was founded to commemorate a historic route mushers used to deliver serum to Nome during a diphtheria outbreak in 1925. It's the dramatic, folkloric stories about traveling across the state and out to the sea ice on Alaska's west coast that draw rookies like Canadian Brian Wilmshurst. He says he's nervous. \"These big windstorms and just the vast white nothingness ... I totally don't know what to expect to tell you the truth.\" Aliy Zirkle says the Iditarod last year was the most challenging of her career. A fan favorite, Zirkle placed second for the third consecutive time as a crowd chanted her name at the finish line. After nearly a week traveling on snowless, rough trail, a fierce windstorm stirred up a ground blizzard roughly 30 miles from the finish line. By the time the race was over, a third of the field had dropped out and some teams were rescued. \"In my craziest dreams, I never would have expected to be mushing in that,\" she says. But Zirkle says the experience strengthened her relationship with her dogs. \"I think that I was successful last year because of the way that I work with my dogs — that my dogs trust me and that the time and effort I put into whelping puppies in my home, and raising them by hand and knowing each one of them intimately actually paid it forward,\" she says. In 2000, Zirkle became the first woman to win the Yukon Quest. She is only the third woman in the world to win a 1,000-mile sled dog race. This year she'll compete in her 15th Iditarod, along with nearly 80 other mushers. She knows a win won't come easy, but she'll draw on past experience to get there. \"It's so fun to be able to travel with dogs who want to go and run more than you do,\" she says. \"When you get on the sled, they're moving, so you better hang on and that's the coolest thing in the whole world.\" MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: The Iditarod sled dog race starts tomorrow. The normal route takes mushers over mountain ranges, across frozen tundra and sea ice for a thousand miles. This year, unseasonable warm weather in Alaska has forced a change in the route. But as Emily Schwing reports from Fairbanks, that doesn't mean the level of competition has lightened. EMILY SCHWING, BYLINE: The Iditarod normally starts in Anchorage, but the race committee was forced to relocate the start line to Fairbanks due to poor trail conditions. This year's re-route includes a section of trail that doesn't get much winter traffic. Some places have little to no snow coverage, and in at least one spot, there is open water where there should be solid ice. But the race will go on. BRENT SASS: In Iditarod, it's just full of all the top competitors. And so it's real fun to, you know, line your team up against all those really great dog teams. SCHWING: Musher Brent Sass is coming to the Iditarod after his recent win in Alaska's other 1,000 mile sled dog race - the Yukon Quest. This year, he'll compete in his third Iditarod. SASS: It goes to these really remote villages that don't get a lot of traffic from outsiders all year long, so it's really fun to pull into the villages and see the excitement from all the people and the history that the race holds. SCHWING: The race was founded to commemorate an historic route mushers used to deliver serum to Nome during a diphtheria outbreak in 1925. It's the dramatic folkloric stories about traveling across the state and out to the sea ice on Alaska's west coast that draw rookies like Canadian Brian Wilmshurst. He says he's nervous. BRIAN WILMSHURST: Well, you know, just about these big windstorms and just the vast, white nothingness kind of deal. I totally don't know what to expect to tell you the truth, you know? ALIY ZIRKLE: In my craziest dreams, I never would've expected to be mushing in t", "I was getting bored with my tired old morning jog. My pace was slow and steady. And, perhaps most boring of all, I didn't seem to be getting any fitter, despite sticking to my running routine. Now I've figured out why. I needed to add a little sprinting to the mix. On Monday's Morning Edition, I look at the science behind interval training. Interval training has been the buzz for a while now, but I'd always pooh-poohed it. After all, I'm not looking to make the track team. Why bother with the fast stuff? Read More >> But after a week of changing pace during my two-mile trek--alternating between 30-second sprints and a very gentle jog--I feel I'm getting more out of exercise. Already, I have a new appreciation for the advice of researcher Pennington Biomedical Research Center's Tim Church, who told me, \"The benefit of interval training is that it's a very efficient way to increase your fitness quickly.\" For more, listen to the accompanying Your Health Podcast and my chat with Ken Fujioka who directs the Center for Weight Management at the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, Calif. In our conversation, he explains the complicated relationship between exercise and weight loss.", "You get a voicemail message from a friend. Her voice sounds a little ... weird. Like a chipmunk who had too much to drink. After her message, you're told you can push a button on the phone and hear another kind of message: say, job listings in your neighborhood or tips on how to stop the spread of Ebola. That's how a new game called Polly works. It was designed by computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University to help get useful information to people with little or no reading skills. Polly asks you if you want to record a message for a friend and make it sound goofy. Drunken Chipmunk is only one option. Polly can turn a man's voice into a woman's voice (or vice versa), make you sound romantic or like you need to go to the bathroom. Polly then sends your goofy-sounding message to the friend and asks if he or she wants to record a message and send it to a friend after Polly makes it sound goofy. If people like playing this game, it goes viral. Now here's the serious part. \"Once we are spreading, we can add on top of that health messages or employment messages or other messages,\" says Roni Rosenfeld, one of Polly's creators. He and his colleagues developed Polly as a way to reach people who can't read. A few years ago, they used Polly in Pakistan to spread information about how to find a job. To get started, all people had to do was call a local number. \"We gave the number to 30 people [in Pakistan],\" says Rosenfeld. \"Then within two weeks we had to shut down the system because we got 10,000 calls, we had only a single phone line and we couldn't maintain the volume. \"A few months later when we got 30 lines, we opened it again, gave the number to five people, and it took off to thousands and then tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands.\" According to the researchers, 20 percent of about 165,000 people playing the game also listened to the employment message. Last November, Rosenfeld started working on a version of Polly for the West African nation of Guinea, where Ebola is still a problem. Instead of giving out employment information, Polly tells Guineans what to do if they suspect someone has Ebola, how to avoid getting Ebola and what to do when someone dies of Ebola. The idea is to build on what health workers are doing on the ground. Rosenfeld says Polly is catching on more slowly in Guinea than in Pakistan. He knows people are forwarding messages to their friends, \"but the numbers remain in the thousands, not in the hundreds of thousands.\" So the game is being tweaked to make it more appealing. Polly's Africa debut was largely propelled by one of Rosenfeld's grad students, Agha Ali Raza. Last November wasn't a great time for Raza to start a new project. He was trying to finish up his Ph.D. But he decided he had no choice. \"I did not want myself to be in a situation like a year from this time to think that 'OK, I was there, I could have done something, but I did not try,'\" says Raza. \"So I wanted to be in a situation that 'I was there, I tried my best, maybe I failed, but I tried my best.'\" Also working on the Polly release in Guinea are Nikolas Wolfe, Juneki Hong and Bhiksh Raj from Carnegie Mellon and Kimberly Phelan Royston, Emily Greem and David Kierski at the U.S. Embassy in Conakry. Raza, meanwhile, did manage to finish his Ph.D. He plans to keep working on Polly at his new job at the Information Technology University in Lahore, Pakistan. RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST: We're going to hear next about a solution to a classic challenge - how to get people to pay attention to something that's important but may be dull. DAVID GREENE, HOST: It is also a solution to a serious problem in the developing world. It's how to get health information to people who may not be able to read it. MONTAGNE: Researchers have tried this solution in Guinea. It's a life or death matter, as we'll hear, but it starts with getting people to play a game on their phones. The game is the latest focus of Joe's Big Idea from NPR's Joe Palca. JOE PALCA, BYLINE: The game is called Polly, and here's how it works. Polly calls you on your cell phone and asks you if you want to record a message for a friend and make it sound goofy, so you might start with something like this. GREENE: Hi, Renee. It's David. I'm running a little bit late. Do you mind picking up my interviews this morning? PALCA: And then Polly turns it into this. GREENE: (Using Drunken Chipmunk voice) Hi, Renee. It's David. I'm running a little bit late. Do you mind picking up my interviews this morning? PALCA: There are several different voice transformations you can choose. That one is called Drunken Chipmunk. Here's another. GREENE: (Using I Need A Bathroom voice) Hi, Renee. It's David. I'm running a little bit late. Do you mind picking up my interviews this morning? PALCA: That one is called I Need A Bathroom. Anyway, Polly sends Renee David's goofy-sounding message and then asks if she wants to send her own goofy message to someone else. If people like playing the g", "If you always learn, then you're always making progress. Lee, here. Above is a quote from renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson. He was on today's program to talk about many things -- his modest upbringing, his faith and the risks of medicine. But, notably, we wanted to talk to the author about his recent honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Also, the debate over Michelle Obama. Is she being covered fairly by the press? She's been called \"unpatriotic\" and \"angry\" by some, but to an entirely different group she's \"classy\", \"supportive\" and just ... \"strong.\" We're also interested in knowing how your perceptions of Mrs. Obama differ from that of, say, Cindy McCain. Or, will the personality of candidate's spouse be of any significance to you at all when choosing a president in November?", "The top U.S. steeplechaser, Anthony Famiglietti, says he hopes to win a bronze in Beijing. Why not gold? Because he doesn't cheat and says some of his competitors do. He credits his success to no longer eating pizza twice a day.", "Kevin Helliker, senior sports editor for <em>The Wall Street Journal,</em> argues that young runners have lost the competitive spirit in running, making them the \"slowest generation.\" He tells host Arun Rath that many young people value camaraderie more than finish times, and some competitions, like the \"Tough Mudder\" race, explicitly avoid the focus on finish times.", "Even a seemingly low-tech activity like running (put on shoes, go running) has been transformed by technology. An increasing number of runners are signing up with Web sites such as Nike+, which not only allows you to set goals and track runs, but hooks you up with an online community with which to compare notes. It's pretty similar to this one we wrote about not too long ago. The Nike sensor costs less than $20, but you can wear them only with certain Nike shoes (definitely not less than $20; some creative runners, however, tape their sensors to their regular running shoes). You also have the option of running with your iPod, a marketing match made in heaven. The Web site is quite impressive and the graphs with which you can track your performance over time certainly provide certainty to your training goals. The big question: Does it work? Read More >> Yes, says Chris Jeane of San Marcos, Texas. Jeane, whom I met through Twitter, tells me that he wanted a way to track his running progress and for some friendly competition with his wife. \"I have used it for about six months, and the ability to set distance and calorie goals is great,\" Jeane says in an e-mail. \"The Nike+ community has been incredibly helpful and motivating, especially as a beginner. \"I have seen a huge increase in my performance, from a 5K of almost 30 minutes to the low 20s.\"", "The holiday is a manufactured obligation that causes stress on moms, kids and husbands, says mom and Slate.com columnist Emily Yoffe. She offers advice on how to minimize the pressure and maximize the fun. MADELEINE BRAND, host: Whether your mom gave birth to you in a bathtub or in a hospital, time is almost up if you're planning to buy her a gift for Mother's Day. It is this Sunday. The pressure is on, but not for Emily Yoffe's family. Emily writes the \"Dear Prudence\" advice column for Slate. Hi, Emily. Ms. EMILY YOFFE (\"Dear Prudence,\" Slate.com): Hi. How are you? BRAND: Fine, thank you. Well, OK. So, in your Mother's Day column, you wrote that you consider your greatest gift, as a wife and a mother, to tell your husband and daughter that they can skip this \"manufactured\" obligation. Ms. YOFFE: Isn't that nice of me? BRAND: That is really nice of you. Ms. YOFFE: It is a great reverse psychology, because that does get me some droopy flowers to sell at the subway stop and a last-minute card by my daughter. But I truly don't care. BRAND: You don't? Why? And why do you dislike Mother's Day so much? Ms. YOFFE: When you go out, and of course, I'm going out for Mother's Day because I have a mother-in-law. I have a mother. You see all these families. Does anyone look happy? I mean, it's just this torture that goes on. Now, you've got 60-year-old women with their 85-year-old mothers, it never ends. It's not like a real event where it's a birthday, where it's legitimate. The focus is on someone. It's just totally artificial and I think everyone feels sort of beaten down, and what in the world do you get? I already got her a Christmas gift. I got her a birthday gift. What do you come up with for this? BRAND: Yeah, that is my perennial problem. What to get her? Ms. YOFFE: Well, I saw how one family tried to solve this problem in an LL Bean outlet store. There was one of those hideous, ruffles-around-the-neck, flannel nightgown embroidered above the left breast with the word \"mom,\" and clearly Mom packed this thing up, sent it back to LL Bean and said, get this out of my life. (Soundbite of laughter) Ms. YOFFE: So, you know, it's just really hard to come up with an appropriate Mother's Day gift. BRAND: Because, yeah, you really want to be reminded on Mother's Day about just how unsexy you are. (Soundbite of laughter) BRAND: I'd like to say, just from my perspective as a mother, what I would like, I'd like to be given the day off. I don't want to be feted. I just want to be able to go away, be by myself. (Soundbite of laughter) Ms. YOFFE: Well, that sounds great. But do you have a mother or a grandmother in town and you have to go out? BRAND: Well, not in town, no. Ms. YOFFE: Ah, see, you're lucky. BRAND: Yeah. Let's say everyone is miserable but they have to go through with it anyway. What's your advice for the best way for them to get through it? Ms. YOFFE: It'd be great if everyone could agree, let's not do this. But if they want to do it, just plaster that smile on your face and realize it's only going to last a few hours. BRAND: It's just one day, after all. Ms. YOFFE: Aren't they all? (Soundbite of laughter) BRAND: Thanks, Emily. Ms. YOFFE: Oh, OK. My pleasure. BRAND: That's Emily Yoffe. She writes the Dear Prudence column at Slate.com.", "If you watched the presidential debates on CNN, you probably noticed the uncommitted voter graph lines at the bottom of your TV screen. <em>Slate.com</em>'s Emily Bazelon says these lines are basically useless.", "Desiree Linden became the first American woman to win the Boston Marathon since 1985 — finishing 26.2 miles in 2 hours, 39 minutes and 54 seconds on Monday. The 34-year-old two-time Olympian lives in Michigan, and she finished second at the Boston Marathon in 2011. But her victory this week almost didn't happen. In the cold rain and wind, Linden says she wasn't feeling well and thought about bailing out of the race. \"It was such a miserable day, and when things go awry, they can kind of ding you up for a while and also take time out of your career,\" she says. \"I'm on the back half of my career, so I have to be super careful at this point. And early on, I was freezing and my muscles were tight, and I was like 'This isn't – this is not my day.' So I did kind of toy around with the idea of stepping off.\" Interview Highlights On fellow American runner Shalane Flanagan's bathroom break We had talked about it a little earlier on in the race when I knew I might be stepping off. I said, \"Hey, if you need help with anything along the way, I'm happy to run through the wind for you and just kind of be a block or whatever you might need.\" And so she nudged me later and said, \"Hey, I'm going to do the port-a-potty thing.\" And I was like, \"OK, well, I'll try to run you back into the group.\" And we got back up there. We reconnected. There was just so much pride on the American side this year. We wanted it so bad. Thirty-three years since an American winner, and I felt like there was some team camaraderie out there. If you can help someone be in position, sometimes it helps yourself out as well. It wasn't about me for those moments, and it kind of came full circle. On crossing the finish line It's the moment you dream of during the tough days when you don't wanna go out and run, when you're a little kid and you're getting into the sport, and you turn [on] the TV, and you see the Boston Marathon. You dream about breaking that tape. It was the culmination of years of hard work, and years of dreaming, and years of never giving up. On the mantra at the top of Linden's Twitter feed That was full-on, in the moment, in the training block. There's a lot of days that I was like, \"I don't know if I'm going to even get to start this race, like this is not going well. It should be going better.\" And then, there was a lot of days where you'd had that glimmer of hope, and you go, \"No, this is exactly on pace. This is the perfect – it's going to plan absolutely 100 percent.\" And I decided to stop thinking about each day so much, and just keep showing up. Like, whatever the day gave me, just show up. That's kind of how I attacked the race, too. Once I got over the fact that I wasn't going to drop out, it was like, \"Just show up for one more mile. Show up for one more minute.\" And that was kind of my mantra throughout this entire build and through the entire race day on Monday. Sam Gringlas and Emily Kopp produced and edited the audio story. Sydnee Monday adapted it for the Web." ]

[ "This past weekend, at least 20 people were killed when drug cartel members opened fire in a bar in Monterrey, Mexico. To learn why the country is facing more violence related to drug cartels and gangs, and what can possibly alleviate the situation, host Michel Martin speaks with Tim Padgett, <em>TIME</em> magazine's Latin America bureau chief." ]

[ "The Food and Drug Administration authorized the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for kids ages 12 to 15. At least 24 Palestinians were killed when Israeli air strikes hit Gaza in the latest escalation after days of violence in Jerusalem. And, the hack of the Colonial Pipeline late last week forced the shut down of nearly half of the nation's East Coast fuel supply. President Biden says Russian hackers are the likely behind the attack.", "New Mexico's Gov. Bill Richardson declared a state of emergency along the border in August, citing escalating violence stemming from drug and human smuggling. Carrie Kahn visited the New Mexico border and profiles a small town on the front lines of the border war.", "Mexico's government is contesting a new international report that says the country had 23,000 homicides in 2016 — a level surpassed only by Syria. The International Institute for Strategic Studies says that intense violence fueled by Mexico's drug cartels has reached the level of an armed conflict. \"The annual survey's lead investigator says Mexico's second-place ranking was surprising, considering the deaths are nearly all attributable to small arms,\" NPR's Carrie Kahn reports, \"and not tanks or aircraft fire as in the political wars of Syria or Iraq.\" News of the report has made headlines in Mexico, a country that can boast the world's 15th-highest gross domestic product, according to the most recent World Bank tally. On Wednesday, the government questioned the methods of the U.K.-based IISS and its decision to include Mexico in its annual Armed Conflict Survey. In a joint statement, Mexico's secretaries of governance and foreign relations said the report irresponsibly points to the existence of an armed conflict within the country. \"This is incorrect,\" the statement continues. \"The existence of criminal groups is not a sufficient criterion to speak of a non-international armed conflict. Neither is the use of the Armed Forces to maintain order in the country's interior.\" The Mexican agencies also questioned the accuracy of the report's figures and methods, saying the country's homicide rate per capita is far below those of other Latin American countries such as Honduras and Venezuela. \"Its conclusions have no basis in the case of Mexico,\" the agencies said of the report. The government said violence from organized crime extends well beyond Mexico, into its neighbors the U.S., Guatemala and Belize. And it said the armed conflict report had attributed all of Mexico's killings last year to drug cartel violence. In a blog post about its findings in Mexico, IISS cited the use of government forces as one factor in its conclusions; it also blamed the problems on \"institutional weakness and pervasive corruption\" as well as the complex dynamic in Central America's Northern Triangle, made up of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. The armed conflict report also describes the militarization of Mexico's criminal gangs, which it says has both helped them grow and fueled a recent spike in killings. As Kahn reports, \"Mexico's murder rate rose dramatically last year, and 2017 doesn't look much better. The homicide rate for the first three months of this year is the deadliest since the height of the drug war in 2011.\"", "Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder are in Mexico strategizing with officials there on how to fight the arms trade fueling Mexico's bloody drug war. Napolitano recently announced that her department will shift resources to the U.S.-Mexico border in response to the increasing narco violence.", "The U.S. State Department has taken the extraordinary step of barring its diplomats posted to Monterrey, Mexico from bringing their children with them because of escalating drug-related and other violence in the Latin American nation. It's the first time the department has done that for U.S. personnel posted anywhere in Mexico, according to NPR's Michele Kelemen who reported the following for our radio network's newscast: A shooting last week outside the American School Foundation of Monterrey and continued threats of kidnapping forced the State Department to review its security measures. Read More The department decided to make Monterrey a partially unaccompanied post. That means U.S personnel will not be allowed to keep their children with them. The State Department says this is the first time it has imposed such rules in a post in mexico, which has been racked by drug violence -- particularly in northern border towns. In March in Juarez, a pregnant State Department employee who worked at the U.S. consulate and her husband, both U.S. citizens, were killed. The same day, the husband of a Mexican citizen who worked at the same consulate, died in a different shooting. The State Department later closed the consulate.", "A 72-hour truce ended almost before it started when violence erupted in and around the southern town of Rafah. More than 30 Palestinians were killed by Israeli shelling and at least two Israeli soldiers were killed and another captured. Israel and Hamas accused each other of breaking the ceasefire, which had been announced by the U.S. and the U.N. The breakdown of the ceasefire and the apparent capture of the Israeli soldier set the stage for a major escalation of the 25-day-old conflict, which has already devastated large swaths of the impoverished coastal strip. Israel had said it would continue demolishing cross-border tunnels behind its own defensive lines during the cease-fire, and the military said its troops were attacked during one such operation. The BBC&#8217;s Nick Childs joins Here & Now&#8217;s Robin Young with details. Note: This BBC interview can be heard in the Here & Now podcast or with the WBUR app. Guest\n\nNick Childs, world affairs correspondent for BBC News. He tweets @ChildsNJ.", "President Biden told Israel&#8217;s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would welcome a cease-fire from the escalating violence in Israel and the Gaza Strip. But Biden says he supports Israel&#8217;s right to defend itself, while progressive Democrats are sharply critical of the country. We get the latest from NPR&#8217;s Michele Kelemen. This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "The leaders of the eight leading industrial countries blame \"extremists\" for the escalating crisis in the Middle East. But a joint G-8 statement offers no diplomatic solutions. Britain's Tony Blair and the U.N.'s Kofi Annan call for an international peacekeeping force to end the violence. The G-8 summit wraps up Monday.", "Negotiations continue in Washington between U.S. and Mexican officials over President Trump&#8217;s proposed series of escalating tariffs on all Mexican imports. The administration says it wants to reach an agreement to stop the flow of migrants from Central American countries into Mexico. Here & Now&#8216;s Lisa Mullins talks with NPR chief economics correspondent Scott Horsley (@HorsleyScott). This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "A wave of kidnappings has hit Tijuana, Mexico, just across the border from San Diego. Citizens' groups say more than 150 people have been kidnapped for ransom over the last year. The trend has made many wealthier families nervous -- and some are moving to the United States as a result. At least 200 Mexican families have moved to San Diego from Tijuana recently, fearing an escalation of violence. In Mexico, state and federal authorities have announced a plan to crack down on abductions. They're increasing manpower, and they hope to improve communication among law enforcement agencies. Meanwhile, Tijuana's municipal police are selling global positioning devices to pinpoint a kidnap victim's exact location for a speedy rescue. And business is booming at a Tijuana auto shop that specializes in bullet proof armor. From member station KPBS, Amy Isackson reports.", "A power struggle between South Sudan&#8217;s president, Salva Kiir, a member of the Dinka ethnic group, and his ex-vice president, Riek Machar, who belongs to the Nuer ethnic group, has escalated into violence along ethnic lines. Witnesses tell the BBC that more than 200 people, mostly Nuer, were shot by government security forces. Another man in the capital city, Juba, says gunmen from the majority Dinka ethnic group were shooting people in a Nuer area. James Copnall, the BBC&#8217;s Africa analyst joins Here & Now&#8217;s Meghna Chakrabarti to discuss the violence in South Sudan. \nBBC: South Sudan crisis: Voices from Juba\n\nGuest\n\nJames Copnall, South Sudan analyst for the BBC. He tweets @JamesCopnall.", "President Obama could deploy National Guard troops to the U.S. Mexico border. In a recent talk with reporters, the president expressed concern about escalating drug violence in Mexico, and its potential to spill across the border. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, who chairs the House subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism. She discusses the possibility. MICHEL MARTIN, host: I'm Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Coming up: It's been said that trying times can draw people closer to their faith. But a new survey suggested that many Americans are moving away from religion entirely. We'll find out more in our Faith Matters conservation. That's in just a few minute. But first, President Obama is considering deploying National Guards troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. In remarks to regional reporters earlier this week, the president expressed concern about escalating drug violence in Mexico and its potential to spill over the border. Those concerns are shared by many officials in American border communities like El Paso City Councilmember Beto O'Rourke. He'll be with us shortly. With us now is Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez. She's the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee's Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism. That subcommittee held a hearing yesterday on border violence and to examine whether strategies and resources at the department were effective. Congresswoman Sanchez, welcome back. Thanks so much for talking to us. Representative LORETTA SANCHEZ (Democrat, California; Chair, House Homeland Security Committee's Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism): Thank you. It's always great to be with you, Michel. MARTIN: Well, thanks. Any headlines from the hearing? Did you learn anything that you didn't know? Rep. SANCHEZ: Well, the first thing I want to say is that we have had several top secret and classified hearings with respect to the violence at the southern border of the United States. And I just want to let people know one of the reasons I held the hearing yesterday was to let Americans know what's going on, because there's a lot of misperceptions. First of all, I think the main thing is that this is really - this violence really escalates because of the drug wars going there at the border, which means that because President Calderon, the Mexican president, has been so effective in clamping down on these cartels, that now the bad guys are really firing back. And they're trying to intimidate by decapitating people, and all these killings of his police force and of his army and even of his government officials, that's Calderon officials. And so while there's a lot of violence, it really hasn't leaked into the general public. There have been a few innocent bystanders, but by and large, the cartels are not going after tourists. They're not going after Americans. We are afraid, though, that they'll get desperate and it may spill over into that, either into that American tourists going into Mexico or across the border into our own cities. MARTIN: And as I mentioned that President Obama said in this interview he did with reporters from the area that he's considering the question of sending National Guard troops to the border, he said certainly no decisions have been made yet. What's your take on that? Rep. SANCHEZ: I think we're very far away from that. Certainly, if we have to, if it gets to the point where the only thing we can use is to mobilize our military there, if course we will do that. Remember, he was talking about National Guard, which is different than our active military Army. And - but I think we are very, very far away from that. Obviously, we have a big law enforcement group, they're called the ICE, and the Border Patrol with their almost 40,000 strong. They work along that border. They're doing investigations. We are mostly getting them the intelligence information that they need. We are getting them other assets, if you will, that will help them to do a better job to find these people and to eliminate them, get them out of the away, get them in prison, etc., so that the cartel wars stop, in effect. MARTIN: You mentioned earlier that Mexican President Felipe Calderon is taking aggressive steps to confront the drug cartels, but recently some Mexican officials, a Mexican ambassador, for example, who was on this program and even U.S. officials are talking about the role that the United States plays in the drug war. This came up at the hearing, for example - in fact, there was a recent Dallas Morning News editorial expressing the view when it's U.S. dollars - sorry. When it's U.S. dollars purchasing the drugs and Americans supplying the military caliber weaponry to Mexico's drug lords, we can no longer look at it as their problem. Are there steps the U.S. should be taking to stop the flow of arms to the Mexican cartels? Rep. SANCHEZ: And the fact, we discussed that in the hearing, 90 percent of the guns that", "<EM>Weekend Edition</EM>'s Daniel Schorr speaks with Alexander Pikayev, a Russian military analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center and Masha Volkenstein, general director of Validata, a Russian market research and public opinion polling firm, about the escalating violence in Chechnya. (7:30).", "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned against &#8220;lynchings&#8221; by mobs of Jews and Israeli Arabs, as violence in the region continues to escalate. Here & Now&#8216;s Peter O&#8217;Dowd speaks with CNN senior international correspondent Ben Wedeman. This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "The oil giant BP opened a gas station in the outskirts of Mexico City in March. On the surface it doesn&#8217;t sound like much. But it also happens to be the first global retail brand to operate a fueling station in Mexico since the country began loosening restrictive energy policies that date back to the 1930s. Here & Now&#8216;s Peter O&#8217;Dowd takes a closer look at where the new station fits in the Mexican government&#8217;s efforts to open the country&#8217;s energy market.", "The United Nations&#8217; Middle East envoy warned Wednesday that tensions &#8220;escalating towards a full-scale war\" between Israel and Palestinian militants after Israeli airstrikes and rockets fired from the Gaza strip claimed more lives Wednesday morning. Dozens have died this week in the violence, most of them Palestinian, as Israeli airstrikes leveled Palestinian apartment towers and Palestinian militant groups fired rockets at Israeli cities. It&#8217;s the worst violence in years for a conflict that goes back decades. Here & Now&#8216;s Peter O&#8217;Dowd speaks with Hanan Ashrawi, a former member of the Palestine Liberation Organization. This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "Several members of the extended family of Mormons whose relatives were attacked in northern Mexico on Monday are speaking out, saying it's time to reject gang violence. As family members prepare to bury the nine victims killed in that attack, they also say both the U.S. and Mexico should be part of the solution. President Trump has extended his condolences to relatives of victims — three mothers and six children, all U.S. citizens — on Tuesday. But it was Trump's offer to help by sending the U.S. military into Mexico that drew a response from both the family and Mexico's government. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador quickly rebuffed Trump's offer, saying his government will seek justice in the case. And on Wednesday, López Obrador's top security official went further, saying the U.S. could help — by stopping the flow of high-powered weapons into Mexico. \"This is a grave problem we have in the country, the smuggling of arms, particularly from the U.S.,\" Security Minister Alfonso Durazo said in an update on the case Wednesday morning. Of the flow of weapons from the U.S., he added, \"it's what has allowed the criminal groups to increase their firepower.\" Alex LeBaron, one of the slain family members' relatives, used Twitter to relay a more direct response to Trump. \"Want to help?\" LeBaron asked in a tweet addressed to the president. \"Focus on lowering Drug Consumption in U.S. Want to help some more? Stop the ATF and Gun Law loopholes from systematically injecting high powered assault weapons to Mexico. \" He added, \"Please help.\" Last year, Mexico reported a record 33,341 intentional homicides — a 15% increase over the previous year. In 2019, criminal organizations have continued to operate with seeming impunity — including an incident last month when security forces retreated from a massive gunbattle that broke out when authorities tried to arrest a son of the imprisoned kingpin Joaquín \"El Chapo\" Guzmán. For years, many Mexican politicians have believed, as NPR's Jason Beaubien reported in 2010, that Mexico's incredibly violent drug war is \"fueled by U.S. demand for narcotics, fought with weapons from U.S. gun shops, and funded by U.S. cash that flows freely across the border.\" When the U.S. performed its own tally of illegal guns that were seized in Mexico, the Government Accountability Office reported that more than 73,000 weapons seized in Mexico from 2009 to 2014 were traced back to the U.S. About half of those were long guns. But officials on both sides of the border also said they were seeing unfinished gun parts — which aren't covered by the U.S. Gun Control Act — leaving the U.S. for Mexico, where they can easily be assembled into finished weapons. \"We're joined by a hip on this. This is a problem for both countries,\" another family member, Daniel LeBaron, says in an interview with KJZZ's Fronteras Desk. Acknowledging the cartel violence that claims thousands of lives each year, LeBaron adds, \"Maybe now with the face of Americans being murdered, it brings it closer to home that this is a serious problem.\" Mexican officials say they're still trying to determine whether the group was targeted or whether they were the victims of mistaken identity. The large Mormon community lives in an area just south of Arizona where rival cartels are currently at war, fighting to secure smuggling routes close to the U.S. border. But citing the intensity of the attack, relatives say the criminals intentionally killed carloads of women and children. Lenzo Widmar, whose cousin Rhonita Maria Miller was killed along with four of her children, tells Mexican media outlet Milenio, \"We are a family of more than 5,000 members in our communities and our roots are already very planted here in Mexico.\" \"We have no plans to leave,\" he adds. Another relative, anti-violence activist Julián LeBarón, tells Milenio that he doesn't care whether the U.S. or Mexico lead the inquiry into the killings, as long as justice is served. The shocking attack is putting new pressure on the nonconfrontational policies of López Obrador, who has often insisted that social changes, not violence, will win the drug war. He's now defending that strategy, which he has often summed up in short phrases, from \"Hugs, not bullets\" to \"We can't fight fire with fire.\" However, the official response to the killings turns out, relatives say they're not leaving the community they call home. \"We are coming together as a community to deal with it. We've been here for five generations. Most of us have blood from both places. And we're no we're going anywhere,\" Daniel LeBaron tells Fronteras. \"We're going to fight this. We're going to stand up to whatever we have to stand up to.\" Discussing the thousands of innocent people who are affected by cartel violence annually in Mexico, Daniel LeBaron says the killings are fueled by \"fundamentally flawed policies\" in both the U.S. and Mexico. The women and children were attacked Monday morning as they drove three SUVs betwe", "The leader of one of Mexico&#8217;s most violent drug organizations, Zeta, was captured yesterday 20 miles south of the Texas border. NPR&#8217;s Carrie Kahn explains who Miguel Angel Trevino Morales was and what this could mean for the long-running drug war in Mexico. Guest\n\nCarrie Kahn, international correspondent for NPR in Mexico City. She tweets @ckahn.\n JEREMY HOBSON, HOST: From NPR and WBUR Boston, I'm Jeremy Hobson. ROBIN YOUNG, HOST: And I'm Robin Young. It's HERE AND NOW. In a moment, a conversation with the brother of a woman allegedly murdered by mob boss James \"Whitey\" Bulger. HOBSON: But first, the leader of one of Mexico's most violent drug organization, Zeta, was captured yesterday, 20 miles south of the Texas border. Miguel Angel Trevino Morales was caught by Mexican marines with $2 million cash on him. NPR's Mexico City correspondent, Carrie Kahn, joins us now to explain who this guy was and what this could mean for the drug war, going forward. Carrie, first, just tell us a little bit about this guy. CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Like you said, he is the leader of the Zetas, and they are easily described as Mexico's most ruthless drug cartel. They came on the scene in the 1990s. They're mostly Mexican army deserters, and they started off as assassins and bodyguards for the Gulf Cartel but broke off into their own organization. And Trevino was the leader, and he's interesting because he has no military experience. He also grew up on both sides of the border. He spent a lot of his teenage years in Dallas, Texas, where he was a local gang member, and he rose from washing cars and doing errands to running drugs across the border. By 2007, he was one of their high commanders. And the Mexican officials say he's responsible for the death of more than 200 migrants, multiple charges against him in Mexico. He's also wanted for murder and drug trafficking in the U.S. HOBSON: Well, how did they catch him? KAHN: It was really quite spectacular from what we were told last night at the press conference, that he was - they had been looking at this area, this rural area south of the Texas border around Nuevo Laredo. And they had been monitoring him for months. They got words that he was - there was going to be some movement. They are monitoring movements, and then a helicopter, at 3:45 in the morning, Monday morning, saw a truck taking off on these rural roads. And they approached it with the helicopter and stopped the car, and then they have some more backup come. And they found Trevino with two people. He was there with his bodyguard and they said his accountant. They found tons of weapons, rounds of ammunition and, as you said, $2 million in cash in the car. And they were quick to say to us last night, to all the reporters gathered for the press conference, that not one shot was fired in his arrest. HOBSON: Hmm. And what kind of effect is this going to have on the drug war? Now that he has been captured, does this weaken some of the gangs? KAHN: It's really difficult to say. You hear from different experts different opinions. But from what we've seen in the past is that the previous administration really went all board on what they called the kingpin strategy, to take the leaders off and go after the leaders. In the Felipe Calderon administration, before the one that's in power right now, that was their strategy. And what we saw was just the violence escalated over the last seven years in Mexico as more than 60,000 people died. So it's hard to. The splinter groups happen when the leaders are taken out. And right now, they said there's as many as 100 cartels operating Mexico, and the violence has not subsided. So we'll just have to wait and see. But if the past says anything, there could be a wave of violence expected in that area. HOBSON: And the new president, Enrique Pena Nieto, is not discussing these arrests very as his predecessor, as you said, did. Is this going to change his strategy? KAHN: Well, it's interesting. We don't really - he hasn't really spelled out his strategy too well. He says he's going to be build up a national police force. He's yet to do that. And it's interesting to me, the previous administration, without - whenever they would catch one of these cartels and somebody as big as Trevino, they would parade them out in front of the press. There'd be a big to-do. There was absolutely nothing of that. At the press conference last night, it wasn't even the interior minister who gave the press conference. It was his spokesman. And yesterday, Pena Nieto, who has clear knowledge of this arrest, was talking about building infrastructure, new ports and roads in Mexico. So clearly, he's going to stay with his script. He does not talk about the drug war. But he - there was lots of praise for the intelligence that took part to get this capture of such a big drug trafficker yesterday. HOBSON: Carrie Kahn, NPR's correspondent in Mexico City. Carrie, thanks. KAHN: Oh, thank you so much, Jeremy. HOBSON", "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held an emergency meeting on Wednesday to authorize new security measures in Jerusalem after two weeks of escalating violence in the city and other areas. At the center of the conflict is access to the holy compound in Jerusalem. Jews revere the site as the Temple Mount; Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif or the Noble Sanctuary. Many Palestinians believe the Israeli government is trying to change access to the holy compound. The violence started on October 1 when an Israeli husband wife were killed while driving home with their children from an event. Members of Hamas were said to be responsible for the killings. Subsequent attacks of Israelis followed, including four yesterday, with Israeli security forces killing or wounding most of the attackers. NPR&#8217;s Emily Harris has been covering this new wave of violence and what measures are being taken to stop it. She speaks with Here & Now&#8217;s Robin Young. Guest\n\nEmily Harris, NPR international correspondent based in Jerusalem. She tweets @emilygharris.", "First of five parts More than 3 1/2 years after Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched his war against the drug cartels, violence in Mexico continues to escalate, and 2010 is on track to be the deadliest year yet in a campaign that has already claimed some 25,000 lives. Top politicians have been kidnapped and killed. Massacres of more than a dozen people have become common. And in July, a car bomb exploded in Juarez. The fallout from the drug war that's starting to be known as Calderon's quagmire is being felt across Mexico, among those of all walks of life. And there is no end in sight to the violence. The town of Taxco is a major tourist destination in the Western state of Guerrero. It's known for its silver mines and fine jewelry. Taxco's narrow cobblestone streets wind amid jewelry shops, restaurants and small hotels. But in June, a gun battle there between the Mexican army and alleged drug cartel members left 15 people dead. With the picturesque colonial architecture as backdrop, the shooting went on for almost 40 minutes in the middle of the day and was captured by a local TV cameraman. A few weeks earlier, authorities had pulled 55 bodies out of one of Taxco's abandoned silver mines. A local drug gang had been dumping its rivals -- sometimes alive -- down the 500-foot ventilation shaft. Early on in this drug war, Calderon said that most of the dead were cartel members. The implication was that the violence is only eliminating the bad people. But as the war has spread, so have the casualties. No One Is Safe In May, a former presidential candidate from Calderon's own party, Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, was kidnapped and is still missing. In June, Rodolfo Torre Cantu, the leading gubernatorial candidate in the northern state of Tamaulipas, was assassinated just days before the election. Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas, is a small city of about 300,000 people. Its markets overflow with vegetables. Vendors sell mango and melon drinks from thick glass vats perched on pushcarts. Music blares from a CD stand. Old men in straw cowboy hats sit in the shade on the city square. At first glance, Ciudad Victoria looks peaceful. But the local Catholic bishop, Antonio Gonzalez Sanchez, says people are terrified. \"Now the violence has invaded nearly all of the state,\" the bishop says. \"We don't have hardly anywhere where there isn't violence, where there aren't killings, kidnappings. Unfortunately it's nearly everywhere.\" Gonzalez says Torre's assassination sent a powerful message that no one in Tamaulipas is safe. \"The people feel, and I think with good reason, that when the government says they're going to overcome the violence, it's a lie, no?\" he says. Violence In Every Corner Of Society And the violence stretches from the Gulf to the Pacific and from the Guatemalan border up to Tijuana. In Nayarit, just north of Puerto Vallarta, the governor shut the public schools three weeks before the summer break after a series of bloody, midday firefights. In the industrial city of Monterrey, schoolchildren are being trained in how to hit the ground if there is a shootout. Along the U.S. border, local news reports indicate that hundreds of thousands of people have fled violence-plagued cities all along the frontier. In Ciudad Juarez last month, workers at a blanket shop picked through the remnants of their shattered plate-glass windows after a car bomb exploded up the street. The Juarez cartel claimed responsibility for the blast that killed three people. In a conflict in which bodies regularly get strung up from highway overpasses and severed human heads are used to send less-than-subtle warnings, the July 15 car bomb represented an escalation of the violence. Politicians and the press debated \"narco-terrorism\" and the \"Colombianization of Mexico.\" After the car bombing, the mayor of Juarez, Jose Reyes Ferriz, said, \"We have to be on alert.\" He ordered all municipal police to take their flak jackets and weapons home with them at the end of their shifts. Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, has been particularly hard hit by the drug war. The fighting intensified in 2008 as the Sinaloan cartel invaded the Juarez cartel's turf. Since then, more than 6,000 people have been killed in this city alone. Extortion and kidnappings have flourished. In early 2009, the Mexican military took control of security in Juarez. Thousands of soldiers patrolled the streets. When that didn't work, the federal police took over, but the violence just continues to worsen. Confessions Of A Cartel Gunrunner At the Juarez municipal prison, inmates are housed in separate wings according to their gang affiliation. The Aztecas live in open cellblocks that are immaculately clean and look nicer than some of Mexico's housing projects. The Aztecas are clearly wealthier than any of the other gangs in the institution. The Aztecas are aligned with the Juarez cartel and have been fighting to try to drive the Sinaloans out ", "A man was shot and killed during a pro-Trump rally in Portland, Oregon on Saturday. President Trump and the city's mayor blame each other for escalating tensions. Also, Wisconsin's governor called on state lawmakers to meet Monday to discuss police reform, but the Senate's Republican majority says it's taking their time on a proposal. And, with the conventions of both parties behind us and Election Day just about nine weeks away, the unrest and violence that we are seeing in some Americas cities have become a core issue of the presidential election.", "Over the past two weeks, hundreds of people have been gunned down in Mexico as drug violence continues to escalate. The surge in killings comes as President Felipe Calderon is ramping up efforts to win more public support for the drug war. Calderon said this week that the bloody offensive against the drug cartels isn't just his war but is an effort to make Mexico safe for all law-abiding citizens. More than 23,000 people have died in drug-related violence since Calderon took office 3 1/2 years ago. Outbursts of gunfire are common. It seems that nowhere in the country is immune. Scene Of A Shootout Plaza Cigarrera looks like a boring strip mall in Tepic, capital of Mexico's Pacific coast state of Nayarit. But a few days ago it was the scene of an intense firefight between cartel gunmen and police and the Mexican military. Jose Garcia works at the taxi stand out front, hailing cabs and helping people with their shopping bags. He says people heard the shots and started running. \"People were yelling, 'They're shooting! They're shooting!' \" he says. The gun battle went on for at least 20 minutes. With dozens of other people, Garcia took refuge in a low-end clothing store where people can buy $10 soccer jerseys on credit. All the businesses locked their doors, Garcia says. Some people were locked in the supermarket for more than a hour. Bullets ripped through the children's play area at the adjacent Burger King. Ulyses Ramirez, a cook there, says eight windows shattered but no customers were hurt. \"There was a lot of panic. There were children,\" Ramirez says. \"The bullets were entering the restaurant.\" He says everyone dropped to the floor for cover, and eventually the staff herded all the customers into the kitchen. The shootout left eight presumed drug cartel members and one policeman dead. Not An Isolated Incident If this had been a lone shootout in this city of 300,000 people, residents might have written it off as a fluke and moved on. But shootings like this have become common as the Sinaloa cartel fights members of the Beltran-Leyva organization for control of Tepic. After 30 people were gunned down last weekend, the governor seized control of the local police, called on Calderon to send in more federal police and shut public schools statewide. Ramon Perez, a retired teacher, says the governor did the right thing in closing the schools. \"The governor is making sure that none of the bullets hit any of the students,\" Perez says, by basically sending children on summer vacation three weeks early. Several shootings have occurred near schools. Last week, the assistant director of the local prison was gunned down -- along with his wife and his bodyguard -- as he dropped his kids off at a school. Calderon: 'It's Worth The Effort' Drug-related violence is happening all across Mexico. According to the national newspaper El Universal, 96 people were killed on Monday alone, the highest daily death toll since Calderon declared war on the cartels in December 2006. And the killing continued the next day. In the tourist town of Taxco, south of Mexico City, soldiers fought a 40-minute gun battle with alleged cartel hitmen that left 15 people dead. As frustration with the drug war grows, Calderon this week tried to rally the Mexican people behind the effort. On Monday, Calderon published a 5,000-word defense of the strategy in several newspapers. On Tuesday, he gave a passionate televised address to the nation calling on Mexicans to join in the fight against organized crime. Although he acknowledged that this fight will not be easy. \"It's worth the effort to continue on with this fight,\" Calderon said. \"It's worthwhile in order to build a free and safe country.\" And he said to give up in the drug war would be to abandon Mexico and leave it in the hands of organized criminals. More than halfway through his term and with violence reaching new peaks, Calderon said the drug war won't be easy or quick, but he said it's a war that \"we will win.\"", "During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump attacked Ford Motor Company for moving some of its production to Mexico, and was accused of sending jobs out of the U.S. In a View From The Top conversation, Here & Now&#8216;s Jeremy Hobson speaks with Mark Fields, president and CEO of Ford Motor Company, about those accusations. They also discuss how Fields hopes to work with the new administration, the future of self-driving cars and CEO compensation. \nSee more in our View From The Top series\n\nInterview Highlights On Trump&#8217;s criticism of Ford for moving some production to Mexico &#8220;To put things into perspective, the focus that we&#8217;re moving down to Mexico is to make room for two very important products in the plant in Michigan. So actually, there&#8217;s going to be no jobs impacted. But when you look at things like tariffs, that would impact the entire auto sector, and that obviously would have an impact on the U.S. economy. So we want to make sure that we engage in a very productive dialogue with the policymakers on this.&#8221; On the benefits of moving production to Mexico &#8220;There&#8217;s a lot of different factors. Obviously from a labor standpoint, it is less expensive &#8212; by a number of magnitudes. But then you have to put in there freight costs and things of that nature. When we look at our production in Mexico, first off, we&#8217;ve been in Mexico for 90 years. But also when you look at the majority of our production, and you look at our capital expenditures and [research and development] expenditures, the majority of that by far is done in the Untied States. We have more than 10 times the number of employees in the U.S. than we do in Mexico. And we also produce more vehicles in the U.S. and employ more hourly workers than any other car maker.&#8221; Array On moving toward more energy-efficient cars &#8220;First off we look at it from a consumer standpoint. Whether it&#8217;s $2 a gallon for a gallon of gas or $4 or $5, people still want good fuel economy, and that&#8217;s what&#8217;s been driving us over the last number of years &#8212; to have vehicles that are either the best or among the best in fuel economy in each and every segment that we compete. But then as we go forward, as we said, we agreed back in 2011 to the fuel economy standards that were set. But we agreed that there would be a midterm review. That midterm review takes place in 2018, and we want to make sure that&#8217;s a fact-based discussion, and that the regulations are aligned with market realities.&#8221; On autonomous vehicles and the auto industry&#8217;s future &#8220;We think the next decade is going to be defined in the auto industry by the automation of the vehicle. And our intent is to have a fully autonomous &#8212; what we call a &#8216;Level 4&#8217; vehicle, where the passenger doesn&#8217;t need to take control at any time &#8212; in 2021, in a ride-sharing or ride-hailing service. And as we go out, our estimation is by the time we get to 2030, one in every five vehicles could be an autonomous vehicle. And so we think it&#8217;s going to change the dynamics quite greatly, particularly in urban areas, and that&#8217;s why we want to be a leader in this area. And we&#8217;ve been working on autonomous vehicles for over 10 years.&#8221;", "Hundreds of thousands of women across Mexico are rallying for two days against violence against women. On Sunday, demonstrations were held in cities across the country and Monday many are participating in a strike called &#8220;A Day Without Women.&#8221; We have two reports from Sunday&#8217;s demonstrations. First, from Mexico City, KJZZ&#8217;s Rodrigo Cervantes (@rodcervantes), followed by KJZZ&#8217;s Kendal Blust (@ktblust) in Hermosilla in the state of Sonora where the number of women murdered last year rose 80% to 117. This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "Drug-related violence in Mexico is escalating at an alarming rate and threatening the government of President Felipe Calderon. CIA and U.S. military planners now fear a worst-case scenario — that the country could implode. The American military is quietly stepping in with more training. It seems that every night in Mexico there are reports of drug-related violence — murders, kidnappings, armed battles with police, narco-traffickers who outgun even the Mexican army with their rocket-propelled grenades. \"Thousands [have been] murdered this year,\" says retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who served as U.S. drug czar under President Clinton. He visited Mexico recently and painted a desperate picture. \"I mean squad-sized units of police officers and soldiers abducted, tortured to death, decapitated. So the violence is simply shocking and we've got to help,\" he says. The violence led the CIA to add Mexico to its list of crises to watch over the next year, alongside longstanding problems like al-Qaida. And U.S. military planners fear Mexico could become a failed state. So, what would that mean for the United States? \"You have maybe unplanned or unanticipated migration of people\" into the U.S. to flee the violence, says Navy Capt. Sean Buck, a strategic planner with the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command. \"You have a humanitarian situation in which we may feel compelled to respond to with other nation states and partners.\" The sort of humanitarian situation that the U.S. finds in places like Africa. So, the American military, including the National Guard, would find itself providing temporary shelter, and food and water both inside Mexico and for those fleeing into the United States. Of course, that's the worst-case scenario being played out by military and intelligence officials. Analysts like Peter DeShazo, a former State Department official with extensive experience in Central America, says to prevent that from happening the United States has to do more to help President Calderon's stated campaign to \"clean up Mexico.\" \"It's a matter of the Mexican government strengthening its capabilities to effectively enforce the law against a very well-armed and very well-financed criminal organization,\" he says. But how? McCaffrey and others say the Mexican police just aren't up to the job of fighting the drug cartels. \"Their municipal police, in many cases, are quasi-criminal organizations. Or they're intimidated or they're outgunned,\" he says. Calderon has so far mobilized some 25,000 troops to fight the drug cartels. U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers recently started to train Mexican army commandoes. And the Marine Corps also is working on an exchange program with the Mexican Marine Corps that will include sharing experiences on urban warfare. That's all troubling to some, who say Mexico risks more human rights abuses if it uses a powerful force like its military to fight drug gangs. Mexico's Human Rights Commission says soldiers have committed abuses, including rape. Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, recently told a Mexican television network, \"The Mexican army should not be doing the job of police,\" calling it \"frankly dangerous.\" DeShazo, the former State Department official, says the Americans should focus more on helping the Mexican police. \"Law and order is the work of police under normal circumstances,\" he says. \"So police reform and strengthening professionalization of the police in Mexico is very important.\" But these are not normal circumstances, say Pentagon officials involved in the Mexican military training. Strengthening the police is needed. But in the short term, says McCaffrey, the Mexican government must rely on its military to take on the drug cartels. STEVE INSKEEP, host: It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. RENEE MONTAGNE, host: And I'm Renee Montagne. Mexico's president says his country is not a failed state and insists it won't be. But President Felipe Calderon's government is in a veritable war with heavily armed drug cartels. That's why the Pentagon is now planning for the worst: the possibility that Mexico might implode. As NPR's Tom Bowman reports the American military is quietly stepping in to help its neighbor with advice and training. (Soundbite of Mexican Newscast) Unidentified Woman: (Foreign language spoken) TOM BOWMAN: It seems that every night in Mexico there are reports of drug-related violence — murders, kidnappings, armed battles with police, narco-traffickers armed with rocket-propelled grenades, who outgun even the Mexican army. General BARRY MCCAFFREY (Retired Army, Former U.S. drug czar): Thousands murdered this year. BOWMAN: Retired Army General Barry McCaffrey served as drug czar under President Clinton. He visited Mexico recently and painted a desperate picture. General MCCAFFREY: Squad-sized units of police officers and soldiers abducted, tortured to death, decapitated. So the violence is simply shocking ", "Retired drug czar General Barry McCaffrey says Mexico is on the edge of an abyss and could become a narco-state in the coming decade. Two military assessments agree with him, warning that Mexico faces the possibility of \"sudden and rapid collapse\" and recommend that the incoming administration do more to support Mexico's government. MADELEINE BRAND, host: From NPR News, it's Day to Day. Mexico could collapse if it doesn't get control of the drug war there. That's the conclusion of two reports, one from the Defense Department, the other from former drug czar Barry McCaffrey, who says Mexico is, quote, \"on the edge of the abyss.\" NPR's Mexico City correspondent Jason Beaubien is in Tijuana. And Jason, that sounds pretty dire, \"on the edge of the abyss.\" What are these reports saying? JASON BEAUBIEN: Both of these reports are basically saying that the drug war in Mexico at the moment is escalating, and it's out of control in some parts of the country, and that the U.S. should be considering that these confrontations that the Mexican state is having with drug cartels almost all across the country could push the state into a failed state. BRAND: A failed state. So what actually could trigger that? What could push Mexico over the edge? BEAUBIEN: At the moment, you've got an escalation of this drug war. And when Felipe Calderon came in as president in 2006, he went after the drug gangs. And over the course of last year, that war escalated dramatically. You had a doubling of the killings. You've got parts of the country, particularly Juarez, to a lesser extent here in Tijuana, where the killings have just gone up astronomically. You have killings. Drug-related killings in Juarez increased five times last year. Basically, police in Juarez have thrown up their hands and said, we cannot contain this. And they're not attempting to contain it. The state is no longer able to do what it needs to do in Juarez. And these reports are saying that that could spread quite dramatically to other parts of the country. BRAND: So basically, the Mexican army and the police officers, they can't do anything? They can't outfight these drug gangs? BEAUBIEN: Actually, I have a really interesting example in Juarez that just happened this week. You had a student from the university abducted by people in army uniforms. And the army yesterday released a press release saying, don't just take them for being army just because they're in army uniforms, and we aren't really responsible for his abduction and torture and killing. The military went on to say that, you know, our people only move in groups of 15. So this clearly wasn't us that was doing it. It's that kind of lawlessness that is occurring and that's really a threat. These gangs are incredibly well armed. They've got billions of dollars worth of resources from the drugs that they're smuggling into the U.S. They're getting tons of weapons. There were a half a million rounds of ammunition seized in Mexicali earlier this week. They were coming in from the U.S. This is a war. This is being fought with military-style weapons. And these reports are pointing out that it's a real threat to U.S. security. BRAND: So if they are out-financing, out-arming, and out-organizing the Mexican army, what can be done? What can the U.S. do? BEAUBIEN: Well, the U.S. has put up $1.6 billion in the Merida Initiative. Only a fraction of that has actually gotten released. It's going to be for equipment and training. The Mexicans, on their side, are saying that they would like the U.S. to do more to curb demand for these drugs, which is fueling the drug cartels, and also clamp down on the weapons that are flowing from the U.S. back into Mexico. That's what the Mexicans would like to do. Basically, these reports are saying the U.S. just really needs to be paying attention to this and giving more thought to what is going on and the seriousness of the problem that's occurring south of its border. BRAND: Jason, thank you. BEAUBIEN: You're welcome. BRAND: That's NPR's Jason Beaubien reporting from Tijuana.", "Alejandro Junco de la Vega runs daily newspapers in three of Mexico's largest cities: Reforma in Mexico City, Mural in Guadalajara and El Norte in Monterrey. Junco was born in Monterrey and earned his journalism degree from the University of Texas. He returned to Mexico to become the publisher of El Norte in 1973. Even at the beginning of his newspaper empire-building, Junco fought for freedom of the press — he hired a UT journalism professor to teach journalistic ethics and techniques to the reporters of El Norte. After El Norte became successful, Junco founded Reforma and Mural. Junco also owns the company Infosel, Mexico's largest Internet provider and online finance and news service. Junco joins Fresh Air to discuss the escalating violence in Mexico. The rising murder rate, especially at the U.S. border, is associated with drug-cartel activity. TERRY GROSS, host: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Kidnappings, home invasions and shootouts are some examples of how the violence surrounding the Mexican drug cartels has spilled over into the U.S., particularly in border states. Mexican drug-trafficking organizations pose a national security threat to the U.S., according to Attorney General Eric Holder. Today, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano outlined plans to bolster security on the border. She announced this in advance of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Mexico tomorrow. One of the people directly threatened by drug-cartel violence is my guest, Alejandro Junco de la Vega. He's the publisher of perhaps the most influential newspaper chain in Mexico, Grupo Reforma. And because his reporters cover the cartels and the drug violence, their lives and his life have been threatened. Junco sent his family across the border to Texas for their safety. It's not the first time he's been in a tough spot. He's run the newspaper chain since 1973. Alejandro Junco, welcome to FRESH AIR. What are some of the risks in covering the cartels and the drugs wars in your newspaper? What has happened to some of your reporters? Mr. ALEJANDRO JUNCO (Publisher, Grupo Reforma): Well, we have basically become under siege by the drug lords and the cartels of the country, and the more that we expose their activities, the harder they push back. For example, recently two reporters from our Monterrey paper, a few months ago, pursued a story. They had heard that a man running a tire-retread shop in a nearby town was being shaken down for protection money because this is how the drug rings have been, quote, \"diversifying.\" And our reporter and photographer paid a visit to the town. Not 10 minutes after they had arrived, armored vehicles pulled up outside, blocking their exit. They were thrown to the ground, their laptops, their camera equipment, their phones, their ID with their addresses, were all taken, and they were beaten. With broken eardrums, shoulders, ribs - they both were hospitalized, and they both quit their jobs. And this is not the first time that such a thing has happened, and the criminals have made it plain: unless we leave them alone, it will not be the last. GROSS: Well, how do you get people to cover the drug wars, given that their lives are in danger if they do? Mr. JUNCO: Well, it's getting more and more difficult, and so we have to adjust. We have to make changes, and our lives are the worse for it. We can no longer run our reporters' bylines. We have to change their beats. We move them from homes to safer apartments. We vary routes to evade kidnappers and our families cannot be habitual in their daily lives. And last year, for the second time in four decades, I had to move my entire family to a safe haven in the U.S. GROSS: The drug cartels in Mexico are famous, among other things, for buying people off: cops, military, government people. What about journalists? Do you have to worry that your reporters might be bribed by the cartels? Mr. JUNCO: Yes. This is a concern, and we have, for many years, run an education program that attempts to illustrate just our commitment to society. We cannot be in any kind of cooperation with the cartels in any way, and also we have to do our jobs. We have to be very clear about what conflicts of interest might arise, and you know, some people have quit their jobs because they feel it's dangerous. But those that have stayed behind, the great, great majority, you know, are honest and diligent, and they believe that we have an important job to do. And if we don't do it, the truth is not going to be out. We have every reason in the world to drop the stories, and we have every reason to look the other way, but we have resolved to continue to report all we know about the problem and continue to ask questions. And we hold to the faith that if we ask enough of them, we might - may finally come upon a solution. And what we know so far is like a conundrum. In Mexico, crime pays. GROSS: Would you give us a sense of the scope of the drug cartels in ", "Ray talks with Reed Kramer of Africa News Service about new evidence that the leaders of South Africa's apartheid government approved in 1985 the formation of a secret paramilitary squad to help the Inkatha Freedom Party in its war against Nelson Mandela's African National Congress. The evidence, compiled by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, suggests that the white-minority regime's covert operation was largely to blame for the sharp escalation in Inkatha-ANC violence in the 1980's.", "A restaurant called Pujol in Mexico City is arguably the country&#8217;s best. The man behind it all is chef Enrique Olvera, who&#8217;s been called one of the best chefs on Earth. During our trip to Mexico City in April, Here & Now&#8216;s Jeremy Hobson paid a visit to Pujol, and talked with Olvera (@enriqueolvera) about the traditions of Mexican cuisine. More Photos", "Israel has started deploying soldiers to cities in an effort to quell escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians. NPR's Emily Harris reports that in recent weeks, at least seven Israelis and more than two dozen Palestinians have been killed. As The Associated Press reports, the deployment comes after a particularly bloody day in Jerusalem in which Palestinians killed three Israelis. The AP adds: \"The government has thus far been unable to stop the violence, carried out mostly by young Palestinians unaffiliated with known militant groups and apparently acting on their own. \"Israeli security officials, however, said Tuesday's seemingly coordinated attacks indicated that the outburst of violence was starting to take on a more organized fashion, from groups behind the planning and those carrying out attacks. The officials, speaking anonymously according to regulations, said Israel expects the current wave to last at least a few more weeks. \"The attacks have caused panic in Israel and raised fears that the region is on the cusp of a new round of heavy violence.\" Emily says the deployment was authorized by Israel's security cabinet, which also authorized police to close off sections of Jerusalem that are \"deemed to be centers of friction, potentially Palestinian neighborhoods. But critics say this could also create additional friction and instead raise tensions.\" The Washington Post reports that this most recent escalation in violence has been sparked in part by \"Palestinian resentment over restricted access to the compound at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem's Old City.\" According to the newspaper's count, eight Israelis and 28 Palestinians have been killed in the past two weeks. Israelis tell the Post that 12 of those Palestinians attacked Israelis; the others have died in clashes with Israeli forces. The Post adds: \"In an attempt to restore calm, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that he would visit the region soon, an announcement received with mixed feelings in Israel after he linked the uptick in violence by Palestinians to an increase in settlement construction. \"United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also said that Israel was making the situation worse, criticizing excessive force by Israeli security forces. \"Palestinian leader and former peace negotiator Saeb Erekat blamed the Israelis for the escalation. He asserted that Israel's 48-year military occupation of the West Bank has spread 'a culture of hate and racism that justifies atrocities, including collective punishment.' \"", "Mexico's homicide rate continued to skyrocket last year, making 2018 the deadliest on record for the country with an average of 91 deaths a day. A report released by Mexico's Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection recorded 33,341 intentional homicides in 2018, a 15% increase over 2017, which held the previous record for the highest number of opened investigations with 28,866 cases. Widespread violence over more than a decade has ravaged cities and towns alike, as drug cartels and criminal organizations appear to operate with impunity, facing few if any repercussions from law enforcement agencies that are rife with corruption or crippled by intimidation. The exploding homicide rates pose an immense political obstacle for Mexico's new President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who, like his predecessors, campaigned on promises of rooting out corruption, and restoring law and order. During his victory speech, the left-wing president proposed calling an end to drug war-era policies implemented by former President Felipe Calderon in 2006, that used military soldiers to crackdown on drug traffickers and crime. \"The failed crime and violence strategy will change,\" Lopez Obrador said on election night. \"We will address the root causes of crime and violence.\" Lopez Obrador also proposed amnesty for nonviolent drug offenders and boosting social programs. Former President Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office in 2012, also vowed to put an end to the rampant killings and he had some success in early part of his presidency. However, his final years in office were marred by bloodshed. In recent years, fissures among once powerful drug syndicates has led to heinous crimes between gangs for control of territory and drug trafficking routes. Criminal organizations have also branched out into new criminal enterprises that often lead to killings, including kidnapping, extortion and fuel theft. Over the last 12 months, the battle over control of the illegal fuel market has caused the number of homicide investigations in the state Guanajuato to more than double to 3,290 from 1,423 in 2017, putting it at the top of Mexico's homicide list. Similarly, in Quintana Roo, a state known for its turquoise water resorts, including Cancun and Tulum, homicide cases jumped from 359 in the previous year to 774 in 2018. In Jalisco, where last September authorities were caught in a scandal for storing corpses in refrigerated trailers because local morgues ran out of space to accommodate the dead, the toll went up by 35 percent. The only state to experience a drop was Sinaloa – down to 1,072 from 1,473 in 2017. The number of slain women was up from the prior year, with 861 investigations compared to 735 in 2017. The state of Mexico recorded the most killings of women with 110. Animal Politico reported federal crimes across the country were also on the rise in 2018 – by nearly 18 percent — for the second consecutive year, including the possession of weapons, drug trafficking, fiscal crimes and kidnapping.", "On Sunday, Mexicans will vote for congressional and local seats in elections that have seen more than 80 candidates killed in a spree of political violence. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of migrants from Mexico City — including those in the U.S. — have also registered to vote for the first-ever migrant representative to the local Congress. From KJZZ&#8217;s Mexico City bureau, Rodrigo Cervantes reports. This article was originally published on WBUR.org." ]

[ "Basil Dearden" ]

[ "The Dog Who Came in from the Cold", "Shop Direct", "Sports Direct", "The Landfill Directive", "direct current", "direct bank", "direct debit", "Directive Principles", "direction of polarization", "direct examination", "Who You Are", "Who's That Girl" ]

[ "Of the two, in my opinion, the Wall Street Journal would be more beneficial. It is going to carry much more day to day information. Keep in mind that Barrons and the WSJ are both publications of the Dow Jones Corp.\\n\\nIf you are looking for investment ideas, I would go with Investors Business Daily." ]

[ "Check Wall Street Journal online - worth a try.", "I use Scottrade and like it. I like the fact that I have both a local physical office and can do all of my business online. I also like the prices they charge and the online interface. Your types of investments may determine what online broker you prefer. I have another online broker for commodities and futures and another for my 401k. \\n\\nMotley Fool has an excellent comparison chart of online brokers. I would look there first before deciding. You might have to register at Motley Fool but it is free. You can also check Barron's once a year rating of online brokers. It is a subscription site, or you can buy it on the newstand. It should published right about now.", "Try Wall Street Journal business section", "SFO and Futures Magazine. I can get both for free.\\n\\nIt is not a magazine, but the Wall Street Journal rocks!", "Try the online journals, with Expanded Academic first, they have more full text articles online, so you don't need to order the journal.", "check mine out its easy http://360.yahoo.com/croga75\\n\\nIts an online journal/blog", "A good site to this type of research for free is Morningstar. Although it has a premium subscription for some of its research, it also provides good, basic mutual fund information for free. You can also check the quarterly mutual fund roundups in Business Week, Forbes, and Fortune, as well as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.", "i prefer TurboTax... today's wall street journal review had people liking TaxCut because it is cheaper.", "If you are working in that area you must be at a college or university. Go to your library and do a search of their online journals. All univeristies have some subscriptions to fulltext journals.", "Barrons.com is free access this weekend, check them as they usually compare brokers...\\n\\nalso Money Magazine, Smart Money, Kiplingers", "go to these links...\\nwww.marketresearch.com\\nwww.barronscommodity.com\\n\\nand a good luck...", "Purchasing an online game gives you the ability to install it and play it on your computer. In order to play most games online, you need an online subscription to that game which costs more money.", "According to Yhaoo Finance and The Wall Street Journal Online Sprint/Nextel (NYSE:S) has 59,900 emplyess. \\n\\nCorporate information like this needs to be disclosed to share holders, so the information is made public. \\n\\nWhen looking for publicly traded company statistics search the company name on yahoo and when the name comes up with the companies stock symbol (example: \"NYSE:S\")click the symbol, then look for the info on the page.", "Dear Rose the best way to find this answer is to visit Wikipedia.com....it is the largest online enclyclopedia...if you are looking for a subscription site, you can visit ebsco.com...which is a largest collection of excerpts of various magazines and online journals...if you got a budget problem then go for archive.com\\n\\nThe best way to find your answer is to go through many featured weblinks and i am sure you will get your answers very easily through the suggested websites...ALL THE BEST!!!", "i have the princeton one and it's pretty good. they explain it to you simply so it's easy to understand. though it doesn't cover as much as the text book does so i suggest you review your textbook as well as the princeton review.\\n\\nwhatever you do, don't get barrons. it sucks on every subject.", "wagesurvey.com and forbes.com", "Check out Barron's Weekly and the Wall Street Journal. Also, most broker web sites present this general information on a real time basis. P.S. Even highly rated corporate bonds can go sour over the long term; you may be better off buying longer-term Treasuries. Bond investing is generally much more difficult than stock investing.", "If you go to a University, chances are your library webpage has a link to all of its electronic subscription journals. A good example is the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, or even PubMed if you know what you're looking for. The most prestigious journals require at the minimum a school subscription.", "yahoo 360 is an online community like myspace, friendster, ringgo etc. a blog is like an online journal but available for anyone on the net to access.", "www.wall-street.com\\nwww.lasvegas.com\\nwww.xxx.com", "Both are essentially the same. Get the one that gives you the most for the least money.", "i use princeton, barron, and kaplan. they're pretty good.", "Theyre both top companies. Its only a matter of personal preference I'd say if the DLink because of price as you have no brand bias yet.", "oh it effect more than just stock in the \"oil\" market... it effects everthing. from stocks to futures. it is complex, if i were you i would go to the wall street journal", "Barnes and Noble or either online...", "A lot of the investment websites have glossaries and definitons of terms. Check out Marketwatch, Smartmoney and Motley Fool. If you want a book, Barrons publishes financial dictionaries. You can get them at Borders or Barnes and Noble or on Amazon.com.", "You pay for it online or buy new in the store! Online they send you a renewal code that you enter on your product in subscription area!\\nGo below for more help!", "Roth Definitly. You can read some on it at the web site listed below", "mysmallbusiness.com or .net", "Rule number 1, for some strange reason the walls of being civil just tottally fall down online. Rule 2 assume that everyone is not who they say they are, if your wanting to start dating online then REALLY get to know the person before you meet, I mean talking online and on the phone. The Internet is like a box a chocolates you never know what your gonna get. ( yeh thats cheesy so.... lol)", "Wall street journal hunni just squash those stupid lil dragonflys...I agree they can be just so annoying. Our space would be so much better off without them...", "Except for a few of the more famous ones (such as his Nobel Prize lecture), Richard Feynman's lectures are copywritten work that you must pay for.\\n\\nIf someone is making these available online, chances are they're doing so illegally. If you have access to a scholarly journal subscription (such as through a university), you might be able to download them there." ]

[ "At a table at a skuzzy pub just up the street from the haunted house, a journalist sits, listening to her source ramble on and on about mysterious disappearances, ancient secrets, strange conspiracies and immortality. She's being good. Has promised that she will listen, and she's trying her best. But it's all so very ... cheesy. Or maybe not cheesy, exactly, but certainly derivative, troped-out and, somehow, comfortingly familiar. \"What I see is the wackometer needle climbing,\" she thinks, as her subject drones on about creepy twins, \"psychic vampires\" and then — wait a minute — did she just drink that tonic water in front of her? Didn't the last person to go missing around here drink something first, too? This is Slade House, the newest novel from David Mitchell — who wrote the beautifully twisty Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks. He's a stylist, a seemingly effortless imaginer of weirded-up nonsense and navigator extraordinaire of the multiple POV school of plots and schemery. As a matter of fact, \"beautifully twisty\" is pretty much Mitchell's trademark these days. And Slade House does nothing to tarnish his rep. It's a horror novel. A ghost story. A haunted house book through and through (which is something you just don't see that much anymore), that covers the years 1979 to 2015 with check-ins every nine years and a different main character with each revolution. Why nine years? Because every nine years the Ghosty McGuffin's Magical Nonsense Generator operating in the spooky house's attic must be recharged with fresh soul energy. Because every nine years a new \"engifted\" person must be lured through the magical doorway to Slade House (which, also, only appears every nine years because MAGIC!) to be tricked, drugged and devoured by the creepy, bickering, wise-ass twins who \"live\" there in order to keep them immortal for another almost-decade. Is it all totally ridiculously contrived and Movie-Of-The-Week goofy? Yes. Does Mitchell explain the mechanics of his soul vampires and one-house Brigadoon with large swaths of expository dialog that occasionally contain lines like, \"First off, they perfected the lacuna ... Second, they enhanced the transversion their Sayyid'd taught them — what the New Age jokers call astral projection — so they could venture out from their bodies as far as they wanted for as long as they wanted. Third, they mastered long-term suasioning, so their souls could move into a stranger...\"? He certainly does. And does any of this bother me even a little bit? No, it does not. Because Mitchell knows he's doing all this. Because he is very aware of every trick he's lifting from a thousand scary stories come before and he faces them down with characters who are just as jaded, just as suspicious and just as disbelieving of all this nonsense as we are — right up until they realize that the trap has been sprung on them, too. The story is told through the repeating mechanic of a dozen-some disappearances over 36 years. That reporter mentioned up top? She's trying to find her sister — who disappeared nine years before her own fateful night in that pub near Slade Alley and Slade House — and she spends forty-odd pages making (internal) fun of the crazy old man telling her stories about astral projection and immortal vampires. Standing in for the audience, she mentally scoffs and guffaws while he spools out his exposition, and we're right there with her, disbelieving everything, until we notice the little details Mitchell has dropped. Like the clock ticking over to 9pm (the hour at which the mystery house takes form) and her sipping at her tonic water (just after the crazy old man tells her that one of the things the twins must get their victims to do is eat or drink something before murdering them and drinking their souls like milkshakes). The less you know about that going in the better, because all the joy in Slade House is in the discovery. It's in seeing different people make the same mistakes over and over again — in seeing the same story play out, the same weaknesses be preyed upon, the same arrogance of the twins who have been doing this for decades. It's in thinking that you'd be smarter, of course. That you'd see through all this B-movie schlock (like creepy portraits, sad ghosts and stairways that go nowhere), find the secret door, and escape. Only to find that you're already trapped. That you missed the trick a few pages back, a few minutes ago, and that you, too, have now become just another guest at Slade House. Just another meal for the nightmare machine. Jason Sheehan is an ex-chef, a former restaurant critic and the current food editor of Philadelphia magazine. But when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books about spaceships, aliens, giant robots and ray guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his latest book." ]

[ "Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona died Saturday at the age of 81. While tributes have come from all sides of the partisan divide, the White House has remained relatively silent. That response hasn&#8217;t surprised Washington insiders, though, as President Trump clashed many times with McCain in his waning days. Here & Now&#8217;s Robin Young talks with NPR political reporter Jessica Taylor (@JessicaTaylor) about the senator&#8217;s legacy and what&#8217;s ahead in politics this week.", "In Pat Barker's new book, Life Class, the author returns to the world-altering event that has served as the backdrop to several of her novels. In her Booker-Prize winning Regeneration Trilogy, Barker explored the impact of World War I on soldiers. Her latest work examines the war through the eyes of three somewhat aimless civilian art students — Paul, Kit and Elinor. In 1914, the three are students at the famous World War I-era Slade School of Art, and they spend their time wandering from class to cafe to country house, ignoring — at first — the clouds on the horizon. Barker's 20-something protagonists struggle with their artistic ability, the pressures of Slade's demanding faculty and their professional and sexual desires. But when the war comes, Paul leaves to become a hospital orderly, and Kit volunteers as an ambulance driver so he can be close to the action. Kit wants to get the war's gruesome images onto his canvases right away. Through her young characters, Barker explores familiar themes from her previous novels with a new perspective. When do artists step over the line in portraying tragedy? What responsibilities do artists have to their subjects? Jacki Lyden spoke with Barker about how the war transforms the protagonists in Life Class. Chapter 1 They'd been drawing for over half an hour. There was no sound except for the slurring of pencils on Michelet paper or the barely perceptible squeak of charcoal. At the center of the circle of students, close to the dais, a stove cast a barred red light onto the floor. The smell of burning coke mingled with other smells: sweat, hot cloth, cigar and tobacco smoke. Now and again you could hear the soft pop of lips inhaling and another plume of blue smoke would rise to join the pall that hung over the whole room. Nobody spoke. You were not allowed to talk in the life class. In the Antiques Room, where they spent the mornings copying from casts of Classical and Renaissance sculpture, talking was permitted, and the students — a few of the women, in particular — chattered nonstop. Here, apart from the naked woman on the dais, the atmosphere was not unlike a men's club. The women students had their own separate life class somewhere on the lower floor. Even the Slade, scandalously modern in most respects, segregated the sexes when the naked human body was on display. Paul Tarrant, sitting on the back row, as far away from the stove as he could get, coughed discreetly into his handkerchief. He was still struggling to throw off the bronchitis that had plagued him all winter and the fumes irritated his lungs. He'd finished his drawing, or at least he'd reached the point where he knew that further work would only make matters worse. He leaned back and contemplated the page. Not one of his better efforts. He knew, without turning to look, that Professor Tonks had entered the room. It was always like this with Tonks, the quiet entry. He seemed to insinuate himself into the room. You knew he'd arrived only when you saw the students sitting opposite straighten their shoulders or bend more anxiously over their drawings. Tonks was a dark planet whose presence could be deduced only by a deviation in the orbit of other bodies. Paul risked a sidelong glance. Tonks, bent at the shoulders like a butcher's hook, was scrutinizing a student's drawing. He said something, too low to be heard. The student mumbled a reply and Tonks moved on. Another student, then another. He was working his way along the back row, passing quickly from drawing to drawing. Sugden brought him to a halt. Sugden was hopeless, among the worst in the class. Tonks always spent more time on the weaker students, which indicated a kindly disposition, perhaps, or would have done had he not left so many of them in tatters. So far his progress had been quiet, but now suddenly he raised his voice. \"For God's sake, man, look at that arm. It's got no more bones in it than a sausage. Your pencil's blunt, your easel's wobbly, you're working in your own light, and you seem to have no grasp of human anatomy at all. What is the point?\" Many of Tonks's strictures related to the students' ignorance of anatomy. \"Is it a blancmange?\" had been one of his comments on Paul's early efforts. Tonks had trained as a surgeon and taught anatomy to medical students before Professor Browne invited him to join the staff at the Slade. His eye, honed in the dissecting room and the theater, detected every failure to convey what lay beneath the skin. \"Look for the line,\" he would say again and again. \"Drawing is an explication of the form.\" It was one of the catchphrases Slade students sometimes chanted to each other. Along with: \"I thy God am a jealous God. Thou shalt have none other Tonks but me.\" There was no getting round Tonks's opinion of your work. Tonks was the Slade. Paul looked at his drawing. If he'd been dissatisfied before he was dismayed now. As Tonks drew closer, his drawing became mysteriously weaker. Not only had he fail", "Florence is now a tropical depression, but the storm&#8217;s danger is far from over. The port city of Wilmington, North Carolina, was cut off Monday because of rising floodwaters. Here & Now&#8217;s Jeremy Hobson heard from Wilmington resident Leslie Hudson as she was waiting in line for gas. Interview Highlights On attempting to find gas in Wilmington \"I got up this morning looking for gas for our generator. We have no power, and I&#8217;m at Costco, which I understand from GasBuddy is the only place in Wilmington that currently has gas, and the line goes out the gas station, it winds through the Costco parking lot, and it goes around the block, down a couple streets. So yeah, it&#8217;s going to be a long line. People are just sort of camping out. &#8220;But what&#8217;s great, honestly, is I, for the first time ever in a couple days, have cell service, so it&#8217;s been really great to be able to just find out what&#8217;s going on.\" On whether she thinks she could leave the city \"Honestly, I don&#8217;t know. I mean, that&#8217;s the thing, we haven&#8217;t had any data. The worst part in many ways is just being really isolated. People here have no idea what&#8217;s going on in some areas, because I have no data service near our house. I think, I probably could leave. I just don&#8217;t think I&#8217;d get back in.\" On whether her house was damaged, and the extent of damages to other parts of the city \"We were really, really lucky. Our neighborhood was hard hit. We are surrounded by pine trees, and the Carolina pines just danced around and didn&#8217;t really fall. We had minor damage but nothing terrible. \"What was more scary was Saturday night, early Sunday morning, there were flash flood warnings and tornadoes. Two tornadoes came through town, one pretty close to us, and pictures came off the walls, and then we had some flooding in the front of our house. The water was up to the top of our mailboxes. It receded, but that was pretty terrifying. Our house is not in a flood zone. In fact, it&#8217;s supposed to be dry even at Category 4, but we had floodwaters actually just following the storm.\" On conditions in Wilmington now \"It feels like we&#8217;re out of danger. I mean, we&#8217;re all concerned about rain and that it will continue to come, but we are a 'sunny day&#8217; flood area in Wilmington. \"We see the floods after they come down from inside the state, so the Cape Fear River will crest a lot later than inside of the internal parts of North Carolina, so I think people closer to the river are not out of danger. \"The biggest issue is just surviving, because we know we&#8217;re cut off. There&#8217;s no gas. Stores are reopening, and the people running the stores are amazing. It&#8217;s a little scary to go in. They have sheriffs parked around the stores to make sure people leave when they&#8217;re supposed to. The shelves are not terribly supplied, but there is food. Harris Teeters are open all over town, and hardware stores are open. \"We were well stocked, and my husband actually owns a roofing company, so he&#8217;s been running around trying to help people get their roofs in shape and making sure all his jobs are secure. \"A generator&#8217;s running on our porch. There&#8217;s a plug that comes off that, so we charge it off the generator. But that&#8217;s not an option for everybody, so we&#8217;re really lucky.\"", "Hope Hicks, White House communications director, is frequently mentioned in Michael Wolff&#8217;s book &#8220;Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.&#8221; Here & Now&#8216;s Robin Young talks with Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi), New York Magazine Washington correspondent, to find out more about Hicks.", "A devastating drought consumed nearly all of Texas in 2011, killing livestock, destroying agriculture and sparking fires that burned thousands of homes. It was the worst single-year drought in the state's recorded history. As part of NPR's state-based public policy reporting network, StateImpact, we created an interactive news application to show how state policy (and in this case, climate forces) have affected people's lives. The interactive is broken up into four buckets: the his­tory and the drought's pro­gres­sion, the impact and dev­as­ta­tion, the pol­icy choices and their lim­i­ta­tions, and the Tex­ans, who we hope will tell us their stories. To tell us your Texas drought story, comment on the app or leave us a voice mail at (512) 537-SITX (7489). Elise Hu is the digital editor of NPR's StateImpact network, a collaboration among NPR and member stations examining how state issues affect people's lives. Read more about it. DAVID GREENE, HOST: Let's go to Texas now. That state has suffered through record drought. But there may now be signs of hope. Last year was both the driest ever and one of the hottest. Hundreds of thousands of cattle died as lakes, streams and reservoirs ran bone dry. A relatively wet winter has brought back some greenery and some optimism. But experts warn Texas is not out of the woods, and there are concerns that local authorities are not dealing effectively with the ongoing threat. Terrence Henry of member station KUT in Austin our report. (SOUNDBITE OF COW MOOING) TERRENCE HENRY, BYLINE: It's chow time for the cows at the Bastrop Cattle Ranch, east of Austin, Texas. PATTI JACOBS: Girls. Here, get off the ground there. Sarah, eat off the ground, Sarah. There isn't any more. Come on. Come on. Come here. Here. Girls. Come on. HENRY: Things were pretty grim a few months ago for rancher Patti Jacobs. Standing today on her 235-acre property, she reflects back to just how bleak it was last year. JACOBS: Right now, we're looking at one of our stock tanks. That was completely dry. There was no water in there. HENRY: And without rain, her grazing grass turned to dust. JACOBS: Four months ago, this was just bare dirt. There was nothing. HENRY: In the fall of 2010, Texas entered the worst single-year drought in its history. Without rain, lakes dried up, grass died and millions of acres burned in wildfires. For some ranchers, this year's wet winter was a godsend, but in the far western part of the state, the extreme drought continues. Neil Newsome, who grows wine grapes in west Texas, says he has yet to recover from what was a disastrous year. NEIL NEWSOME: We had some zero-degree weather during the winter. It was cold - which is too cold for grapes. And then on May the 7th, we had the latest freeze in history, and we just thought it was getting bad. And then the drought starts. So, after that, all that was left was maybe the asteroid that took out the dinosaurs was next. HENRY: And what about all that talk about a wet winter? NEWSOME: We're still very dry. The winds are starting to kick up now, so the dust is starting to move around. So here we go again if we don't get some rains here pretty soon. HENRY: So what did Texas do to get itself in this predicament? It's simple. Much like its government and citizens, the Texas climate is notably independent from the rest of the country. RAYMOND SLADE: Very little water enters this state from outside of the state, and that's only on the Rio Grande. All other rivers originate from in the state. So when we don't have rain, this state's the one that suffers. HENRY: That's Raymond Slade, a hydrologist who follows water issues in Texas. SLADE: Things are green now, so people think the drought is over. But unfortunately, the lakes are still not full throughout most of the state, and the streams are still not back to normal. So this drought continues, as far as water availability. HENRY: Patti Jacobs, the rancher from Bass Drop Cattle, is not about to get complacent just because of a favorable winter. JACOBS: We lost, effectively, between 600,000 and a million head of cattle out of the state. And what most people don't realize is this wasn't a one-year drought. This actually has been going for three or four years, and we're not out of it yet. TODD STAPLES: These numbers are unprecedented. HENRY: That's Todd Staples, Texas' commissioner of agriculture. He says that total agricultural losses from the drought stand from $8 million. STAPLES: And this is a new record for the Lone Star State. Unfortunately, we like to be setting new records. This is not the direction that we want to go. HENRY: Everyone is hoping the relatively wet winter will lead to an even wetter spring. But some scientists, like Raymond Slade, aren't optimistic. SLADE: It's projected it could get worse. We may have below what's been normal rainfall, could be below for the next several years. HENRY: And for all the talk of funding plans for a dryer future, combined with a growing population", "Pete Souza spent eight years in the White House, photographing President Barack Obama. &#8220;He was so comfortable in front of the camera,&#8221; Souza says. &#8220;Meaning that he didn’t really change how he did anything. The presence of my camera didn’t affect him in one way so I was able to make these really intimate pictures even on his first day.&#8221; From the fun to the solemn to the iconic (see below for examples), Souza&#8217;s photographs defined an administration. He joins us to offer a glimpse inside Obama&#8217;s White House. GUESTS Pete Souza, Former chief official White House Photographer for President Barack Obama; former director, White House Photo Office; former official White House Photographer for President Ronald Reagan; @petesouza For more, visit https://the1a.org. &copy; 2017 WAMU 88.5 &#8211; American University Radio.", "It's been 20 years since the Los Angeles riots shook that city — and the nation. On April 29, 1992, several white Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the beating of black motorist Rodney King during a traffic stop. News of the acquittals sparked unrest across the city. The fires, looting and violence lasted for several days and devastated neighborhoods — many in the city's African-American communities. Three colleagues at radio station KJLH on Crenshaw Boulevard, just seven miles southwest of the city center, watched from their office window as the riots erupted on the street. \"We were prepared for people to be unhappy,\" says Karen Slade, now general manager of KJLH. \"But we couldn't believe our eyes. People were beyond angry. They were crazy. It's like they lost their mind,\" she recalls. The all-music station quickly changed formats as listeners began calling in to describe what they were witnessing across the city. \"The phone started lighting up, and my jocks shut down the music,\" Slade says. \"They stayed on the mic — they took the calls. And probably for the next three days, we just became all talk.\" Eric \"Rico\" Reed was one of those jocks. Looking out the studio's picture window, he says, \"was just like looking at a movie screen.\" Rico gave an on-air play-by-play as he watched people smash the window of a repair shop and run off with a broken TV. \"I can't believe this guy,\" Reed told the audience. \"It's a TV repair shop. The TVs don't even work, man. They just stealing them to be stealing them. It makes no sense.\" Arthur Williams was a driver for KJLH at the time. He recalls watching as a group began beating a Hispanic man in the street. \"And a black priest went out in the middle of the street and held his Bible up and draped himself over the guy,\" Williams says. The group dispersed. \"You know, what he did was unbelievable,\" Williams says. \"He's a hero.\" The riots were devastating, Slade says. But, she notes, they didn't destroy the fabric of the community. She remembers a woman who brought the neighbors together as the violence subsided. \"One lady came out, and she had some of the neighborhood kids. And she got them brooms and everybody was sweeping,\" Slade recalls. \"They were cleaning up Crenshaw — I had never seen it before!\" Even so, it took \"almost forever\" to get new stores back in a \"community that [was] burnt to the ground,\" Reed says. \"Our community wasn't perfect, but it was gorgeous,\" Reed says. \"Some areas haven't come back — and probably never will.\" KJLH won a Peabody award for its coverage of the riots. Audio produced for Morning Edition by Nadia Reiman.", "One moment from Sunday night&#8217;s Grammy Awards is drawing criticism from the Trump administration: the reading of excerpts of the book &#8220;Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.&#8221; A number of artists at the awards show also wore a white rose in solidarity with the #MeToo movement, drawing attention to sexual harassment and assault. Here & Now&#8216;s Jeremy Hobson speaks with The Atlantic&#8217;s Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) about those and other moments from the Grammys.", "Today, online retail giant Amazon announced plans to find a site for their second North American headquarters. The project could cost as much as $5 billion and house as many as 50,000 workers. Amazon is accepting proposals from cities through Oct. 19, and is expected to announce the winner in 2018. Here & Now&#8216;s Jeremy Hobson speaks with Linette Lopez (@lopezlinette), senior finance correspondent for Business Insider, about the company&#8217;s plans.", "Jared Kushner, son-and-law and adviser to President Donald Trump, lost his top-level security clearance this week, putting in jeopardy a broad portfolio that includes peace in the Middle East and trade with China and Mexico. What’s his future in the White House? And, given his marriage to President Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, did he belong there at all? On Point took up the subject Thursday with Politico’s Josh Gerstein, Claire Finkelstein of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law, and Shane Harris, a Washington Post reporter who helped break the story about other countries looking to leverage Kushner’s inexperience and business ties. “Congress needs to start taking conflicts of interest and nepotism concerns much more seriously,” Finkelstein told guest host Ray Suarez, “and start legislating to control abuses in these areas.” The New York Times also reported recently that Citigroup and private equity firm Apollo made large loans to Kushner’s family business after White House meetings. Here are some more highlights from this show: On the difficulties Kushner will face in doing his job now that his security clearance was downgraded: Harris: “He’s working with other people in the White House and in other agencies who have top secret clearances when they&#8217;re working on these projects. You literally can&#8217;t be in the room discussing this information at the top secret level unless you have that clearance so unless everyone is prepared to essentially kind of downgrade the conversation when Jared&#8217;s around he can&#8217;t participate in those meetings. On divesting from a broad (and highly leveraged) business empire: Finkelstein: One ought to point out here that this is following the president&#8217;s own example for failing to divest himself of his own financial holdings completely when he assumed office. And so if the president had set a different example I can only assume that Kushner would have felt under constraint to more fully divest himself from his family&#8217;s holdings. On financial disclosures and continuing business ties: Gerstein: “There&#8217;s also increasing indications from financial disclosures filed by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner about the challenges that they&#8217;re facing financially and that their debts may well be increasing.” On the shifting &#8212; and perhaps broken &#8212; norms in the Trump White House: Harris: “This is not the way things normally go. And it&#8217;s not the way power is normally used. .. Why did this go on for as long as it did? Because the White House decided to allow it to go on. It&#8217;s the White House&#8217;s call to decide to award a clearance, as Claire points out. It&#8217;s ultimately the president&#8217;s behavior that sets an expectation for what is tolerable inside the White House.” On another note: the departure of Hope Hicks as communications chief. Gerstein: “I think the timing of it was something of a surprise, although there had been folks that had talked about different tensions in the White House between her and Chief of Staff (John) Kelly and different rival camps there in the White House, but certainly coming immediately the day after she gave testimony up on Capitol Hill, where she reportedly made comments that she had occasionally told white lies on behalf of the president, really did turn heads at the White House.” Guests: Josh Gerstein, senior White House reporter for Politico. (@joshgerstein) Shane Harris, intelligence and national security correspondent at the Washington Post. (@shaneharris) Claire Finkelstein, director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law. From The Reading List: Washington Post: Kushner’s Overseas Contacts Raise Concerns As Foreign Officials Seek Leverage &#8212; &#8220;Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.&#8221; Jared Kushner&#8217;s father-in-law Donald Trump has given him big assignments…making Mideast peace, managing the complex relationship with Mexico. To do that, you’ve got to see America’s secrets. Kushner has just lost his security clearance as questions rise about his private businesses and government duties. Also, Hope Hicks out as communications director. This hour, On Point: Secrets, and white lies. &#8212;Ray Suarez", "There's no Peggy Sue — or even a Margaret or a Susan, for that matter — in the British folk-rock band Peggy Sue. There is, however, a hard-driving group that has just released its second album, Acrobats. Peggy Sue is the trio of singers and guitarists Rosa Slade and Katy Young, and drummer Olly Joyce. Compared to the band's first record, Acrobats leans less toward folk and heavier toward rock. It plays with darker textures, like discordant vocal harmonies, and relies more on electric guitar. As Young says, \"[The word] 'foreboding' is in every review, I think.\" \"I don't think we necessarily set about to make moody music, but I personally definitely use songwriting as quite a cathartic process,\" Young says. \"So often I'll be writing because I'm having a bit of a dark day. And we're not miserable people all the time, but I think that's — I don't know, it's a way of exploring those ideas and those emotions without having to walk around being miserable all the time.\" Slade and Young recently spoke with Weekend Edition Saturday guest host Linda Wertheimer while on tour in Copenhagen, Denmark. The singers talked about creating macabre moods, and the influences behind Acrobats. \"Any time that anyone mentions a PJ Harvey influence, we're massively happy about it,\" Young says. \"It's a nice comment to get from anyone.\" LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST: There is no Peggy Sue or even a Margaret or a Susan for that matter in the British folk rock band Peggy Sue. What there is, though, is a hard-driving trio that's just released its second album. The album is called \"Acrobats.\" (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, \"CUT MY TEETH\") PEGGY SUE: (Singing) Boy, I held the sweetest heart, I cut my teeth upon his love. All I know now, I learned back when, his mouth would start where mine would end. WERTHEIMER: That's the opening track, \"Cut My Teeth,\" off of Peggy Sue's new CD. Peggy Sue is singers and guitarists Rosa Slade and Katy Young, and drummer Olly Joyce. Ms. Slade and Ms. Young join us now from the JAM studios in Copenhagen, where they're on tour. Welcome to our program. ROSA SLADE: Hello. KATY YOUNG: Hi. WERTHEIMER: You know, years ago, I interviewed a British rocker, P.J. Harvey, in our studios and as soon as we heard the opening of \"Cut My Teeth,\" I thought there's a P.J. Harvey influence in there somewhere. And then we noticed it's your producer, John Parish. SLADE: Well, hopefully it's not only our producer, I think it's also mine and Katy's kind of longstanding love of P.J. Harvey as well. YOUNG: Anytime that anyone mentions a P.J. Harvey influence, we're massively happy about it. It's a nice comment to get from anyone. WERTHEIMER: Now, your first recording was acoustic, but you've plugged in for this one, obviously, heading into kind of the rock end of folk rock. What possibilities do you think that creates for you? SLADE: I think it's just experimenting with new things, which is something we've always been very keen to do, like we've never been entirely satisfied with just sticking to one instrument. We've always tried to pick up new things and I think that, like, trying out and experimenting, it means that you write differently. And we kind of explored acoustic guitars a lot on the first album, although there was always an electric element in there alongside it. And for this album, we just really decided that we wanted to explore that side of it more and kind of see what kind of sound we can get out from an electric guitar. WERTHEIMER: Let's listen to a song that really kind of jumps out on this CD, \"Song and Dance.\" (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, \"SONG AND DANCE\") SUE: (Singing) Why (Unintelligible), gonna cry and again. He's making his bed, only him (unintelligible) he looks on his chest. For he knows my mess, in my (unintelligible), so until I (unintelligible), he will sing to his (unintelligible) under his breath... WERTHEIMER: These are very tight harmonies. How do you build that into a song? YOUNG: Well, harmonies have always been one of the co-elements of the band when we first started. WERTHEIMER: But you were much sweeter in the earlier songs. YOUNG: We were sweeter? Possibly. I think there was always a discordant element because neither of us are classically trained. We don't necessarily understand the harmonies that we're writing. We just make up things that we think sound good. And in sometimes it is quite a good way to make a song intricate to have these harmonies. But it's always been very much about our two voices working together. And often people struggle to sort of work out whose voice is whose. And I think we use the harmonies in that way quite a lot. WERTHEIMER: You obviously like this discordant harmony because it's all over this CD. YOUNG: I'm not sure whether - I didn't even really realize it was discordant until people said it was discordant. I think it just creates a mood. I'm never quite sure what it is that we're doing that creates that mood but I really like that kind of macabre moods that we've been creating recently. A", "Canada&#8217;s Parliament is back to business today, less than 24 hours after a lone shooter killed a soldier at the country&#8217;s War Memorial, and was later killed by Parliament&#8217;s Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers, inside a crowded hallway. Members of Parliament broke into spontaneous applause that lasted minutes as Vickers entered the floor of the House of Commons. He held back tears as hundreds of MPs honored what many are calling heroic actions that saved many lives. Canadian MP David McGuinty, who represents the Ottawa area, was there today. He was also in Parliament yesterday, on lockdown, until late in the evening. He joins Here & Now&#8217;s Robin Young from Ottawa to discuss what happened yesterday, as well as potential changes in Canada&#8217;s anti-terror laws moving forward. Guest\n\nDavid McGuinty, member of the Parliament of Canada. He tweets @DavidMcGuinty.", "With guest host Jane Clayson. “Alexa, I want to order a pound of kale.” We’ll unpack Amazon’s deal for Whole Foods and the future of retail. Amazon shook the earth last week with a $13.7 billion move to buy Whole Foods. It would give the online juggernaut an immediate real estate footprint – over 400 physical stores – and expand the company’s foothold in the food business. It’s touted as a game-changer for groceries, but it could also rock the struggling retail industry. This hour On Point: Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods and the future of retail. Guests Lauren Hirsch, mergers and acquisitions correspondent for Reuters. (@LaurenSHirsch) Rod Sides, vice chairman and U.S. leader in retail and distribution for Deloitte. (@RodSides) Howard Davidowitz, retail industry consultant. Founder and chairman, Davidowitz and Associates. From The Reading List Reuters: Amazon to buy Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, wielding online might in brick-and-mortar world &#8212; &#8220;Amazon used aggressive pricing to become an e-commerce retail juggernaut and has recently been experimenting with brick-and-mortar outlets. It will take over a natural and organic grocer pioneer with 456 stores, a mecca for young, high-end shoppers, that has been struggling to rein in prices and integrate technology.&#8221; WIRED: Amazon Is About To Transform How You Buy Groceries &#8212; &#8220;Although the deal surprised a lot of people, the e-commerce giant has long wanted to figure out the online groceries game. It started testing delivery concepts in August 2007, when it unveiled Amazon Fresh—delivering produce and pantry staples through its fulfillment centers. Yet even after a decade—eons in Silicon Valley time—it&#8217;s still trying. Turns out, the instant gratification business doesn&#8217;t quite work with fresh food.&#8221; USA Today: Amazon-Whole Foods deal could mean new phase of retail &#8212; &#8220;Amazon’s offer to buy Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion could usher in a new phase of retail, with the potential for hybrid stores and an increasingly fluid sense of where goods come from and how they get to consumers. &#8216;What we&#8217;re seeing today is the evolution of retail. This is a shot across the bow,&#8217; said Robert Hetu, a research director for retail technology with Gartner.&#8221; Twitter Milks The Amazon-Whole Foods Deal\n\nI, too, spend $13.7 billion at Whole Foods. &mdash; Slade Sohmer (@Slade) June 16, 2017 \nJeff Bezos: \"Alexa, buy me something from Whole Foods.\" Alexa: \"Sure, Jeff. Buying Whole Foods now.\" Jeff Bezos: \"WHA- ahh go ahead.\" pic.twitter.com/GuJ2jlAiuU &mdash; JESAL (@JesalTV) June 16, 2017 \nAmazon buys Whole Foods for 13.7 billion, roughly equivalent to 11 shopping bags of their organic berries. &mdash; Warren Leight (@warrenleightTV) June 16, 2017 \nAmazon: We bought Whole Foods! Amazon&#39;s Amazon account: You may also like Trader Joe&#39;s, Bristol Farms & Wegmans! &mdash; Gavin Purcell (@gavinpurcell) June 16, 2017 \nIntroducing: the same Amazon packaging you know and love, now with products from Whole Foods! #LSSC pic.twitter.com/pcFozEYdcp &mdash; The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) June 20, 2017 \nAmazon 2000: *Sells books* Amazon 2010: *Sells everything* Amazon 2017: *Buys Whole Foods* Amazon 2030: *Buys the Federal Government* &mdash; Nick (@nick_lindquist) June 17, 2017", "NPR diplomatic correspondent Michele Kelemen (@michelekelemen) joins Here & Now&#8216;s Robin Young to discuss the mood and morale inside the State Department, amid turmoil over President Trump&#8217;s Syria policy and as current and former employees give closed-door testimony in House Democrats&#8217; impeachment inquiry. This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made a surprise offer to North Korea: &#8220;Let&#8217;s just meet.&#8221; But Tillerson&#8217;s uncertain standing inside the Trump White House has some observers questioning how much weight the secretary&#8217;s words actually carry. Here & Now&#8216;s Robin Young talks about the latest diplomatic development with Jane Harman, director, president and CEO of the Wilson Center.", "There are a billion and a half bands from Brooklyn, but the group joining us today are poised to be breakout stars. This band has already been crowned by many as the hardest working band in New York. They're Sunflower Bean. On their sophomore album Twentytwo in Blue, out today, the band incorporates its love of 70's British glam rock like T. Rex and Slade to the sound. It's a bit of a shift from Human Ceremony, where the band played with lots of sounds and influences throughout. Twentytwo in Blue is a more focused offering and displays' the band's maturity at such a young age. Spoiler alert, all the members are 22 years old! Sunflower Bean is a three piece, co-fronted by singer/bassist Julia Cumming, and guitarist/vocalist Nick Kivlen, who probably knows he reminds everyone of a young Bob Dylan, and drummer Jacob Faber. The three have a natural rapport and it was fun to sit down and talk with them, which you'll hear after the live performance of the band's first single from Twentytwo in Blue, \"I Was A Fool.\" Hear that and more in the player above.", "President Trump&#8217;s lawyer is trying to stop the publication of reporter Michael Wolff&#8217;s forthcoming book, &#8220;Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.&#8221; Trump has also threatened legal action, sending a cease-and-desist letter to his former chief strategist Steve Bannon. NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) joins Here & Now&#8216;s Robin Young to talk about the reaction to the book.", "With Meghna Chakrabarti The New York Times published an anonymous op-ed Wednesday afternoon from a senior official in the Trump administration who claims to be working with others to thwart the president&#8217;s agenda. We dig in. Guests Kristen Welker, NBC News White House correspondent. (@kwelkernbc) Eliana Johnson, White House reporter for Politico. (@elianayjohnson) Heather Cox Richardson, professor of history at Boston College. (@HC_Richardson) Brian C. Kalt, professor of law and the Harold Norris Faculty Scholar at Michigan State University&#8217;s College of Law. (@ProfBrianKalt) From The Reading List New York Times: &#8220;I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader. &#8220;It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall. &#8220;The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. &#8220;I would know. I am one of them.&#8221; The Atlantic: &#8220;This Is a Constitutional Crisis&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Impeachment is a constitutional mechanism. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment is a constitutional mechanism. Mass resignations followed by voluntary testimony to congressional committees are a constitutional mechanism. Overt defiance of presidential authority by the president’s own appointees—now that’s a constitutional crisis. &#8220;If the president’s closest advisers believe that he is morally and intellectually unfit for his high office, they have a duty to do their utmost to remove him from it, by the lawful means at hand. That duty may be risky to their careers in government or afterward. But on their first day at work, they swore an oath to defend the Constitution—and there were no &#8216;riskiness&#8217; exemptions in the text of that oath.&#8221; The Weekly Standard: &#8220;The Four Men Most Likely to be Behind the New York Times Op-ed&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;It’s only been online for a few hours, but the anonymous New York Times op-ed penned by a &#8216;senior official in the Trump administration&#8217; has set off a frenzy of guessing about who is claiming to be one of the people &#8216;working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.&#8217; &#8220;The White House was out with a response Wednesday afternoon. &#8216;We are disappointed, but not surprised, that the paper chose to publish this pathetic, reckless, and selfish op-ed,&#8217; reads the statement from press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. &#8216;The individual behind this piece has chosen to deceive, rather than support, the duly elected President of the United States. He is not putting country first, but putting himself and his ego ahead of the will of the American people. This coward should do the right thing and resign.&#8217; &#8220;There are some clues within the 965-word essay of who the &#8216;coward&#8217; (or courageous truth-teller, depending on your perspective) really is. There are indications the writer is a movement conservative, including a line that castigates Trump for not sharing conservatives’ affinity for “free minds, free markets, and free people.” There is a noticeable lack of discussion of any issues of constitutionalism, the law, or immigration. The writing is straightforward, unpretentious, and familiar with the conventions of op-eds.&#8221; CNN: &#8220;13 people who might be the author of The New York Times op-ed&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;On Wednesday afternoon, The New York Times posted an anonymous op-ed titled: &#8216;I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.&#8217; &#8220;The piece is remarkable. Identified only as a &#8220;senior official in the Trump administration,&#8221; the piece lays out how the author &#8212; as well as other colleagues within the administration &#8212; are waging a semi-open campaign to keep the President from doing too much damage to the nation. &#8220;&#8216;Many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations,&#8217; the author writes.&#8221; Poynter: &#8220;&#8216;Anonymous&#8217; NYT byline quite rare, often given for reasons of safety&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;On Wednesday, the newspaper&#8217;s startling &#8216;anonymous&#8217; op-ed — which it verified as coming from a senior Trump White House official — caused a firestorm and backed up accounts in Bob Woodward&#8217;s upcoming book, &#8216;Fear,&#8217; about underlings going to extremes to protect America from an impulsive, unbalanced president. The op-ed talked about Trump&#8217;s ineffective leadership and moves to prevent his &#8216;half", "Starting Friday, film fans can pass the time in self-quarantine with a Jesse Eisenberg digital double-feature. In thriller “Vivarium,” Eisenberg plays half of a hopeful couple house-hunting in a neighborhood full of identical green homes. The couple finds themselves trapped with a child inside one of the houses — a vivarium, which means animal enclosure. Watch on YouTube. Eisenberg describes the film as a “nightmarish fever dream” where a couple’s dreams of starting a modern middle-class family in the suburbs take a bizarre turn. “It has some very strange resonance right now where this kind of insidious thing seems to be attacking you and you&#8217;re stuck inside your house and there&#8217;s no one around,” he says. “The movie, just as movies often do, takes on different resonances when they finally come out.” “Vivarium” is a cross between Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel’s work and Netflix’s “Black Mirror” or “The Twilight Zone,” he says. The film skews real-world symbols to create terror within the characters without traditional horror movie scares, he says. Whether viewers will enjoy this film while stuck inside because of the coronavirus pandemic depends on their particular situation, he says. “If you have a kind of case of schadenfreude, you probably would enjoy watching somebody who&#8217;s worse off than you,” he says. “But if you want to get your mind off it, I&#8217;m sure there&#8217;s a million other things on your queue.” In biopic “Resistance,” Eisenberg plays the great French mime Marcel Marceau as a young man during World War II. Marceau used his artistic skills and imagination to rescue hundreds of Jewish children orphaned by the Nazis. Watch on YouTube. To prepare for the film, Eisenberg studied for nine months with Lorin Eric Salm. Salm teaches the discipline of Marceau but also chronicles the legendary mime’s life and the history of the craft. Eisenberg learned both Salm’s choreography for the movie and to appreciate the history of this more abstract style of performance art. “It&#8217;s not the kind of literal performances that I&#8217;m used to either writing or acting,” he says. The “reluctant hero” Marceau initially prizes his art and only wants to perform for his own sake, Eisenberg says. But as the war heats up and he’s asked to entertain kids, he realizes he can use his art to help others. The grandchild of Holocaust survivors, Eisenberg says the movie shares a series of “unusual coincidences” with his life. His family is from an area in southern Poland close to where Marceau was from. Plus, his mother is a birthday party clown. His mother would put on the same makeup as Marceau to perform for children in the same style during his own childhood, he says. His dad taught social psychology, which helped his mother avoid scaring kids with things like big shoes or a fake red nose, Eisenberg says. Every weekend, he would wake to the sound of his mother “meticulously” tuning her guitar for her silly performances that she took very seriously, he says. This helped him learn an important lesson. “I think in some way it unconsciously at least taught me that regardless of what kind of performance you&#8217;re doing, take it seriously,” he says. “If it&#8217;s kind of a silly comedy movie or whatever, you take it as seriously as you would take any drama.” On top of these leading roles, his piece &#8220;An Immodest Proposal&#8221; performed by actor Richard Kind is part of &#8220;The 24 Hour Plays: Viral Monologues.&#8221; For Eisenberg, having two movies come out during a pandemic is a “surreal” and “strange” experience. But he imagines people want to engage in normal activities — even if they watch the movie from their couch instead of a theater. “I&#8217;m in the kind of like public conversation once every year and a half when I have movies come out and I have to do interviews,” he says. “And so you know you don&#8217;t want to be doing it at the time where you feel like it&#8217;s irresponsible talking about anything other than washing your hands.” But these two films speak to different contemporary approaches to entertainment, he says: emphasizing the horrors of an unusual suburban neighborhood and an uplifting tale of heroism during wartime. Neither films are “blind to the terrors of the world,” he says. Emiko Tamagawa produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Tinku Ray. Allison Hagan adapted it for the web.  This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida is warning of the national security risk posed by Chinese-funded Confucius Institutes housed at U.S. universities. There are now renewed calls to shut the schools down. Here & Now&#8216;s Meghna Chakrbarti speaks with Elizabeth Redden (@ElizRedden) of Inside Higher Ed.", "With Meghna Chakrabarti The wins, losses and messages that voters sent to Washington in the midterm elections. We’ll check in with top reporters across the country. Guests Kimberly Atkins, Washington bureau chief for the Boston Herald. (@KimberlyEAtkins) Nathan Gonzales, editor and publisher of Inside Elections, which provides nonpartisan campaign analysis. Political analyst for CNN and RollCall. (@nathanlgonzales) Adam Smith, political editor for the Tampa Bay Times, and creator of the award-winning Florida politics blog, The Buzz. (@adamsmithtimes) Patrick Svitek, primary political correspondent for the Texas Tribune, and editor of The Blast, the Tribune&#8217;s daily political newsletter. (@PatrickSvitek) Megan Messerly, political reporter for the Nevada Independent. (@meganmesserly) From The Reading List Boston Herald: &#8220;Analysis: Democrats shift left on issues&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;The 2020 election campaign season kicks off today, and the Democratic Party has emerged from the midterms not only with control of the House, but as a far more progressive team preparing to take on President Trump in a battle of not just words and insults, but ideas. &#8220;But Democrats still have a long way to go in reaching many of the voters they need to have a shot at the White House, including Latino voters, who party organizers failed to energize — even as Democratic leaders decried Trump’s message on immigration as bigoted and divisive. &#8220;&#8216;It’s more than about specific issues, it’s about the character of the country,&#8217; former Vice President Joe Biden told reporters yesterday after he voted in Delaware, previewing a message Democratic strategists said will be a 2020 mainstay for candidates up and down the ballots.&#8221; NPR: &#8220;Democratic Control Of The House Is Trouble For Trump, And 6 Other Election Takeaways&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;It was a Democratic wave in the House, and that is a very big deal. &#8220;This stands head and shoulders above anything else you&#8217;ll read about the 2018 midterm elections — and maybe the only thing that matters. Come January, Democrats will be in charge of the House once again. They stand to pick up between 24 and 32 seats when all the races that are too close to call are finally decided. Democrats needed a net gain of 23 seats to take control of the House. Make no mistake: That is a wave. &#8220;Just how big a deal is recapturing the House for Democrats? Imagine a scenario in which Republicans maintained control of the House. President Trump and Republicans would consider themselves validated and step on the gas, likely repealing the Affordable Care Act, rolling back more regulations and seeking any other number of policy priorities that Democrats would find odious.&#8221; Tampa Bay Times: &#8220;Ron DeSantis defeats Andrew Gillum in Florida governor’s race&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Florida broke the hearts of Democrats once again Tuesday, as President Donald Trump&#8217;s anointed gubernatorial candidate, Ron DeSantis, edged out presumed frontrunner Andrew Gillum. &#8220;The photo finish delivered Florida&#8217;s top office to the GOP for a sixth straight election, and is sure to leave Democrats shattered about how they could lose an election where they seemed to have so many advantages. &#8220;Dozens of polls showed Gillum consistently holding a narrow lead over DeSantis, and state Democrats were optimistic that the president&#8217;s unpopularity, DeSantis&#8217; close association with Trump and enthusiasm among Gillum supporters would end two decades of utter GOP dominance over state government.&#8221; Texas Tribune: &#8220;Ted Cruz defeats Beto O&#8217;Rourke in re-election fight&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, narrowly defeated Democratic challenger Beto O&#8217;Rourke Tuesday evening in what appeared likely to be one of the closest U.S Senate races in Texas in decades. &#8220;With more than 60 percent of precincts reporting in Texas, Cruz had a four-point lead over O&#8217;Rourke. While Cruz had a strong showing across most of rural Texas, O&#8217;Rourke narrowed the margin by winning urban counties and coming within striking distance in some Texas suburbs.&#8221; The Nevada Independent: &#8220;Rosen wins upset victory over Heller; Lee, Horsford snag two House seats&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen won an upset in the U.S. Senate race Tuesday night over incumbent Republican Dean Heller in one of the most closely fought and closely watched contests in the country, although Democratic losses in three key races elsewhere in the nation allowed Republicans to retain control of the upper chamber. &#8220;Rosen, a first-term congresswoman with no prior political experience, defeated Heller, who has spent nearly three decades in Nevada politics, by a 5.3-percentage-point margin though the two had appeared relatively close in polls in the days leading up to the election. It was a stark contrast from the outcomes of tight races in", "Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defends and deflects from the White House. Is she just doing her job? We&#8217;re taking a look inside the briefing room with people who are there every day. Guests: Major Garrett, chief White House correspondent for CBS News. (@MajorCBS) Kathleen Parker, columnist for the Washington Post. (@kathleenparker) Martha Joynt Kumar, emeritus professor of political science at Towson University. From Tom&#8217;s Reading List: Washington Post: Trump Built A Wall. Her Name Is Sarah. &#8212; &#8220;When White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders asked the press corps Monday to preface their daily briefing questions with a statement of thankfulness, reporters obliged. Or, should we say, obeyed. For this, no doubt, Sanders was grateful.&#8221; What’s true?  And what is the White House saying?  Donald Trump tweets and talks a lot.  Over the weekend on taxes, Michael Flynn, the FBI. We’ll look at that.  And then his press secretary is left to take the follow-up questions.  For Sean Spicer, it was all too much. He quit.  White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders just toughs it out.  And truth?  If you ask her about that, be ready for some hardnosed Sarah.  This hour, On Point:  Truth, the president, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders. &#8212;Tom Ashbrook", "Austan Goolsbee will chair the president's Council of Economic Advisers, President Obama said today. Who is Goolsbee? Read More: Among other things, he's \"D.C.'s funniest celebrity\" He's a University of Chicago economist who studies taxation and the economics of the Internet. Here are links to a bunch of his papers. He's known Obama for years. They taught at Chicago at the same time, and Goolsbee advised Obama during his 2004 Senate run, the Washington Post says. At 41, he'll be the youngest person to hold the job since the late '60s, the according to the NYT. He graduated from Yale in '91 and got his Ph.D. from MIT in '95. He's a good talker. He makes frequent press appearances (we had him on the podcast a while back). Last year, he was voted D.C.'s funniest celebrity, though you wouldn't know it from this clip of him doing stand-up. This Daily Show spot is a little livelier. He also wrote for Slate before he worked in the White House. He opposed the Chrysler bailout, which led to a widely publicized fight with Larry Summers, another big-shot White House economist. (Here's an insider's account of that fight.) He's replacing Christina Romer, a U.C. Berkeley economist who has held the job for the past few years and said last month she'd be stepping down.", "This week in the Russia investigations: Trump wanted to fire Mueller — does that matter? Parsing the tea leaves of the palace intrigue. And is this the end of the FBI memo meshugas? Whoa President Trump reportedly tried to fire Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller last year, not long after firing FBI Director James Comey. But White House counsel Don McGahn wouldn't go along, so the president backed off. The New York Times exclusive that contained these revelations detonated with such force in Washington, D.C., that it took the breath away, metaphorically, of nearly everyone in town. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., needed some 15 hours in order to condemn Trump in a press release. Her fellow San Franciscan, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., needed even longer. Many members of Congress and others, including the Justice Department, said nothing at all. Speaking to reporters Friday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump dismissed the report. \"Fake news. Fake news,\" the president said in brief remarks as he entered the conference hall. \"Typical New York Times. Fake stories.\" And prior to leaving for Davos, the president had told reporters: \"There's been no collusion whatsoever. There's no obstruction whatsoever.\" Once the shock wore off, however, how much did the story matter? Attorneys for Trump say they've offered \"unprecedented\" cooperation to special counsel and congressional investigators in the Russia matter. Trump himself — in what otherwise would have been the big story of the week — surprised reporters and his own staff by announcing how eager he is to talk with Mueller under oath. So if Trump was in a legal jam over alleged obstruction of justice after he fired Comey and considered firing Mueller — but didn't — has he made his case better or worse? As usual, no one knows but Mueller. All the procedural and legal levers that Trump could have pulled before to get rid of Mueller are still available to him. He could still choose one. It's too soon to appreciate whether the Times bombshell will prove to have been the loss of a play that the White House now won't want to run again. Or it could have been a chance for the president to monitor the reaction in the country, or lack thereof, in case he decides down the line to get rid of Mueller. The story behind the story Nearly as significant as the Times story is the fact of the leaks behind it. Correspondents Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman cited four people who told them about the matter. Who would know such things? Why would they talk about them to the press? McGahn? His top deputies? Former chief of staff Reince Priebus? Top members of Congress said they were blindsided. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Jake Tapper on CNN that he didn't think he could be surprised anymore — and was. So why this story and why now? Hypothesis: If Trump, as president, cannot be indicted if he was charged with obstruction of justice or another transgression, his aides certainly can. Mueller has charged two people and concluded guilty pleas with two others. So if McGahn or others want to put themselves on the right side of any potential criminal activity Mueller might allege went on inside the White House, making the case for themselves in public would be one way to do it. Hypothesis: McGahn did not threaten directly to Trump that he would quit if Mueller were fired, The Washington Post reported. But if Trump didn't know that then, he knows now. And, in fact, could the whole situation be the result of people inside the administration trying to warn Trump against firing Mueller without needing to have that conversation inside the family? Hypothesis: White House officials could be despairing that the wheels have come off this administration. Mueller has a G-man snooping through every desk and a G-woman listening outside every door. People on the inside don't want to lie to investigators and as the special counsel's office snakes toward the president — via the attorney general and others — they feel they have no choice but to come clean. Here is how one attorney put it to Darren Samuelsohn and Josh Meyer in Politico: \"It's one more brick in the wall,\" said a Washington lawyer representing another senior Trump aide in the Russia probe who added that the most interesting aspect of the Trump-Mueller story to him was that \"people are leaking this s***.\" \"That is a sign to me people perceive this ship has sprung a leak and it's time to make themselves look good,\" the attorney said. \"To some extent I think the fact of the leaking is almost the most significant, that we've reached an inflection point where people at the center of things feel the need to redeem themselves at the expense of the president.\" Meaning what? If the Times story is an \"inflection point\" for people inside the administration, it could mean the rest of this Russia imbroglio shifts too. For one thing, it could mea", "With Kimberly Atkins The Mueller will be released Thursday morning. We lay out what&#8217;s at stake politically and legally. Guests McKay Coppins, staff writer for The Atlantic. Author of &#8220;The Wilderness: Deep Inside the Republican Party&#8217;s Combative, Contentious, Chaotic Quest to Take Back the White House.&#8221; (@mckaycoppins) Nancy Gertner, retired Massachusetts federal judge, senior lecturer on law at Harvard Law School and WBUR legal analyst. (@ngertner) Mark Updegrove, author, presidential historian for ABC News. President and CEO of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation. Director of the LBJ Presidential Library from 2009 to 2017. Author of &#8220;The Last Republicans: Inside the Extraordinary Relationship Between George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.&#8221; (@MarkKUpdegrove) From The Reading List New York Times: &#8220;White House and Justice Dept. Officials Discussed Mueller Report Before Release&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Not all of Robert S. Mueller III’s findings will be news to President Trump when they are released Thursday. &#8220;Justice Department officials have had numerous conversations with White House lawyers about the conclusions made by Mr. Mueller, the special counsel, in recent days, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. The talks have aided the president’s legal team as it prepares a rebuttal to the report and strategizes for the coming public war over its findings. &#8220;A sense of paranoia was taking hold among some of Mr. Trump’s aides, some of whom fear his backlash more than the findings themselves, the people said. The report might make clear which of Mr. Trump’s current and former advisers spoke to the special counsel, how much they said and how much damage they did to the president — providing a kind of road map for retaliation.&#8221; Politico: &#8220;‘Keep your mouth shut’: Dems erupt over Barr’s Mueller report rollout&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;House Democrats exploded in anger Wednesday over Attorney General William Barr’s plans to roll out special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, accusing the Justice Department of trying to spin the report’s contents and protect President Donald Trump. &#8220;Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will hold a news conference at 9:30 a.m. Thursday morning to review the report, which will include redactions. Reports that DOJ officials have already discussed Mueller’s findings with the White House only further inflamed tensions. &#8220;Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Barr had &#8216;thrown out his credibility & the DOJ’s independence with his single-minded effort to protect @realDonaldTrump above all else.&#8217; &#8220;&#8216;The American people deserve the truth, not a sanitized version of the Mueller Report approved by the Trump Admin,&#8217; Pelosi wrote on Twitter while on an official trip in Ireland. &#8220;Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee hastily convened a news conference for Wednesday night in Chairman Jerry Nadler‘s district in New York City to issue similar broadsides against Barr.&#8221; CNBC: &#8220;Attorney General William Barr will hold a press conference to discuss Mueller report at 9:30 am ET Thursday&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Attorney General William Barr will discuss special counsel Robert Mueller’s report at a 9:30 a.m. ET press conference on Thursday. &#8220;Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will accompany him, according to NBC News. There was no indication that the report would be released before the press conference. &#8220;Mueller submitted the report to the Justice Department late last month. Barr will be releasing a redacted version of the approximately 400-page document, which details Mueller’s findings about the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election.&#8221; Brian Hardzinski and Karen Shiffman produced this hour for broadcast. This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "Hurricane Irma devastated the Florida Keys in 2017 — and some residents are still trying to recover. The Category 4 storm caused tens of billions of dollars in damage in the U.S. and left more than 100 dead, mostly in Florida. Lori Rittel made it through the storm alive, hunkering down in Miami, away from an off-white house she’d just moved into in Marathon in the Florida Keys. She says she’ll never forget what she saw when she returned home. Debris surrounded her house, the refrigerator was tipped over and her brand new washer and dryer machine was completely wrecked. In her living room, the water rose so high, it nearly submerged her entire couch. She says a majority of her belongings were covered in mold. “It was a surreal experience to come back to see what you&#8217;ve got left after a hurricane has been through,” she says. “I don&#8217;t wish it on anybody.” For more than two years, the 60 year old has been living in what she calls unsafe and unsanitary conditions. But she says it’s all she has. “I’m pretty much trapped right now,” she says. She’s been trying to get the state to buy her badly damaged home and knock it down so she can stop living in it. But the buyout process can take years and she&#8217;s struggling. The city of Marathon won’t grant her a permit to start repairs on her house, she says. The city claims her house is substantially damaged, which means repairing the house would cost more than 50% of its value. “They want it rebuilt on stilts, and I don&#8217;t have the money to rebuild,” she says. She’s applied for a buyout through the Rebuild Florida Voluntary Home Buyout Program, which was created to “encourage risk reduction through the purchase of residential property” in high-risk areas. They’re offering the pre-Irma tax appraisal price of the house and land, then adding 10% per year, she says. After calculations, Rittel says the offer would come out to between $5,000 and $6,000 less than what she currently owes on the mortgage. Rittel only moved into her “little shangri-la” from snowy Montana a year before Hurricane Irma hit. She says it was the first house she’d ever bought — a place she truly loved. But now, after two year of living in destruction, she has second thoughts on her move. She cautions others who consider a permanent stay in the Keys. “I honestly don&#8217;t think they should keep allowing people to build here,” she says. “But if I were to consider moving to the Keys at this point and building a house, I wouldn&#8217;t. I wouldn&#8217;t do it.” It’s well known that Florida experiences hurricanes. But Irma’s destruction was “really frightening” and made her rethink long-term living in Florida. Climate change is changing the real estate and home property values, which makes Rittel “terrified” of investing in her home. She says she doesn’t see the point when property values in her area are likely to plunge due to threat of flooding from sea level rise, which the EPA predicts will increase one to four feet in the next century. Out of all 50 states, Florida residents and homes will be most affected from dangerous storm surges and sea level rise due to climate change, Climate Central’s CEO and chief scientist Ben Strauss says. Rittel, stuck with her mortgage and inside her mildewed home, gets “horrendous” stomach aches when looking at the pictures of her home before and after Irma. She says the aches are a “physical reaction to what I’m trying to stifle emotionally.” The self-described climate migrant is looking forward to her next move, preferably somewhere inland and warm, she says — although trying to escape the effects of climate change is no small task. “If you aren’t paying attention” to the climate crisis, she says, then “you’re asleep because it’s so obvious to me.” Lori Rittel&#8217;s House Before Hurricane Irma\nLori Rittel&#8217;s House After Hurricane Irma\n Ashley Locke produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Serena McMahon adapted it for the web. This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "The housing market has come a long way since 2008 when the great recession hit, unemployment soared and the foreclosure crisis began. Today in Phoenix, Arizona, President Obama plans to discuss a White House strategy that could energize the housing recovery even further by offering lower rates on fees charged to Federal Housing Administration (FHA) borrowers, with potential savings of hundreds of dollars a year. NPR Senior Business Editor Marilyn Geewax speaks to Here & Now&#8217;s Robin Young about the president’s plan and the outlook for the housing market in 2015. \nRead Marilyn Geewax&#8217;s latest story on the housing market\n\nGuest\n\nMarilyn Geewax, senior business editor for NPR. She tweets @geewaxnpr.", "Just about every day in Washington, rain or shine, tourists stand along Pennsylvania Avenue snapping photographs of the White House or just peering through the iron fence. But getting an inside look can be tricky. Visitors usually have to get tickets far in advance, either from a member of Congress or a foreign embassy. Starting Saturday, there is another option. A newly refurbished Visitor Center a few blocks away from the White House offers an up-close look at the executive mansion without having to run the gantlet of the Secret Service. First timers like Alan Roberts and Zainab Siddiqui are often surprised by the very human scale of the White House. \"It's a little bit smaller than I thought,\" says Roberts. \"Obviously I've seen it on the TV quite a few times.\" But the building enjoys an outsized presence on tourism maps. \"How can you come to Washington and not see the White House?\" asks Siddiqui. For many visitors, though, a glimpse from the fence line is all they get. The National Park Service, which maintains the White House grounds, wants to change that. \"One of our great goals here was to make the White House story as accessible as possible to people,\" says John Stanwich of the National Park Service, \"because it touches each and every one of us whether you're an American citizen or whether you're a citizen from anywhere else in the world.\" The Center reopens after a two-year, $12.5 million facelift. It is located on the ground floor of the Commerce Department, a couple of blocks southeast of the White House. Inside, visitors can see a scale model of the executive mansion along with dozens of White House artifacts. \"Right here we have a desk. And this is the actual desk that Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his fireside chats,\" says Stanwich. \"People that know about the fireside chats can actually physically see the desk here and imagine all those trials and tribulations that our nation faced during those times.\" While some of the items on display are historic, others are homespun, befitting a White House that is both a center of power and a personal dwelling space for the first family. Visitors can see both the telegraph key where Lincoln learned of Robert E. Lee's surrender, and Jimmy Carter's hand-drawn blueprint for his daughter Amy's tree house. Earlier this week, first lady Michelle Obama got a sneak preview of the newly renovated center. She pointed to the intercom buttons on an usher's desk from early in the last century, and noted the White House still has buttons just like that throughout the upstairs living quarters. \"There are buttons everywhere, and I never touch them,\" she said. \"You're just worried that a bunch of people will come rushing in. And you don't want that.\" More than half the money for the center's makeover was raised privately by the White House Historical Association. \"There are a few iconic symbols, most of them are commercial related, that people around the world connect with America,\" says Stewart McLaurin, president of the Association. \"But we believe the emblem of the White House represents America to the world.\" McLaurin expects a million visitors will pass through the center every year. For all their power, even America's presidents are just passing through the White House. One exhibit, titled \"Moving Day\" reminds viewers that every four years, or eight, there's a new first family, with their own photos and furnishings, while the White House itself endures. \"And so the White House represents that peaceful change and continuity of governments, across party lines, across ideological differences,\" says McLaurin. \"This is the people's house. And it brings our country together in a very special way.\" WADE GOODWYN, HOST: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Wade Goodwyn. The White House is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the nation, but getting inside can be tricky. Most visitors have to get tickets far in advance, usually from a member of Congress. But there's another option starting today. A newly refurbished visitor center a few blocks away from the White House offers an up-close look at the executive mansion without having to run the gauntlet of the Secret Service. NPR's Scott Horsley reports. SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Just about every day in Washington, rain or shine, you can find tourists standing along Pennsylvania Avenue, snapping photographs of the White House or just peering through the iron fence. ZAINAB SIDDIQUI: How can you come to Washington and not see the White House? Maybe it's not as big or grand as I imagined it to be. ALAN ROBERTS: It's a little bit smaller than I thought. Obviously, I've seen it on the TV quite a few times. DANIEL ZAVATA: It's smaller than we believed. (Laughter). HORSLEY: For many visitors, like Zainab Siddiqui, Alan Roberts, and Daniel Zavata, a glimpse from the fence line is all they get to see. The National Park Service, which maintains the White House grounds, wants to change that. JOHN STANWICH: One of our gr", "The House Republican Conference meets Wednesday to discuss the fates of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney. It&#8217;s a test of divisions within the party in the wake of Trump&#8217;s impeachment after the Capitol insurrection. Greene, who supports Trump, has come under heavy criticism for spreading conspiracy theories and for her history of racism and anti-Semitism. Liz Cheney, a top Republican in the House, has prompted ire from Trump loyalists for voting to impeach him. We get the latest from NPR&#8217;s Claudia Grisales. This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "<em>Fresh Air</em>'s Dave Davies discusses John F. Kennedy's abbreviated term in office with presidential historian Robert Dallek, who finds that while you can make an argument that Kennedy accomplished little, he represents something special in the American experience. Dallek's latest book is <em>Camelot's Court: Inside The Kennedy White House</em>.", "The masks are going back on.  The CDC has recommended that fully vaccinated Americans in parts of the country dealing with a high amount of Covid transmission go back to wearing masks inside. That’s most of the country right now. In fact, 63 percent of the U.S. falls into that “masks-on” category. The new guidance comes with a shift in tone from the White House as new Covid cases continue to surge.  We talk about the latest pandemic news and the steps the White House is taking to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in the U.S.", "White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said in a recent interview with The American Prospect that the U.S. is &#8220;at economic war with China.&#8221; He also added his opinions on recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia, and North Korea. Here & Now&#8216;s Meghna Chakrabarti speaks with Linette Lopez (@lopezlinette) of Business Insider about recent research about what economic tension with China could mean for the U.S. economy." ]

[ "Apple Computer announces it is recalling nearly 2 million notebook computer batteries that could overheat and catch fire. The batteries, like 4 million recalled by Dell, are made by the same supplier, Sony." ]

[ "An Apple store in Amsterdam was evacuated and temporarily closed on Sunday in what local news reports described as the explosion of an iPad battery. Employees immediately responded to the incident by placing the device into a sand-filled fire bucket and contacting the local fire department as a precautionary measure, according to a BBC report. Firefighters and first responders arrived to help ventilate the store. No life-threatening injuries were reported; however, three employees were treated for minor respiratory issues caused by inhaling chemical fumes released by the Apple tablet, according to the BBC. But Apple says no customers or employees required medical attention. The company is still investigating the Sunday incident, according to an Apple spokesperson. The store has since been reopened. 9to5Mac, a site that covers Apple, outlined some precautions users can take to prevent injury. \"As always, don't attempt to replace a swollen battery. Head in to an Apple store or nearest authorized Apple service provider as soon as possible,\" it said. Apple stores have dealt with similar device malfunctions this year. An iPhone battery exploded in the Apple Store in Zurich in January, Digital Trends reported. Another battery exploded in an Apple Store in Valencia, Spain. Tech giant Samsung has also experienced issues with battery malfunctions. NPR reported last year on the company's investigation into Galaxy Note 7 phones catching fire. Faulty batteries exhibiting short circuits led to the recall of 2.5 million of the devices. Apple's help page for maximizing battery life and life span outlines how users can properly care for their products. It recommends updating to the latest software and avoiding exposure to extreme temperatures to get the best performance from the lithium-ion batteries.", "Apple announced a batch of gear and software Wednesday that CEO Steve Jobs says will bring popular elements of mobile devices to the company's laptop and desktop computers. Among them: more ability to \"swipe\" windows, and improved video chatting. To accomplish that, the company will release a new operating system -- OS X Lion -- next year, as a replacement for the current Snow Leopard. Ars Technica has posted a nice roundup of those changes -- which will bring more of an \"app\" experience to Mac laptops and desktops. The most significant changes to iLife -- the company's \"lifestyle\" software -- touch on photo management and movie editing. For instance, as MG Siegler points out over at Tech Crunch, iPhoto is now far more integrated with third-party groups. The \"Share\" menu now includes choices for Facebook, Vimeo, YouTube and CNN iReport. Here's a broad overview of the changes, from the AP (and tweaked a bit by me): NEW MACS: The new MacBook Air laptops come in two sizes. The larger has a screen measuring 13.3 inches diagonally; it weighs 2.9 pounds. The smaller is 11.6 inches and 2.3 pounds. Both have flash memory only, and longer battery life. Price: $999-$1,599 NEW SYSTEM: Apple is adding FaceTime video-chatting to laptops and desktops, available now on its site. And the upcoming Mac OS X Lion borrows a bit from the iPhone, including swiping between screens. Lion will come out next summer. NEW SOFTWARE: A new version of iLife for managing photos, editing video and other tasks, has been released. It includes face-recognition within videos, and improved audio editing. It will come installed on new Macs or costs $49 to upgrade existing ones. The news verified some of the predictions made by Mac fans in the traditional frenzy of ideas that gain currency before any large Apple announcement. Those who had pined for Blu-ray HD capability were disappointed -- but it was almost universally expected that Jobs would announce a refreshed version of the Air, the company's ultrathin laptop. For more pictures, and to get a sense of the overall presentation, Endgadget has archived its liveblog of the event.", "Samsung Electronics is recalling its brand-new smartphone, the Galaxy Note 7, after dozens of users reported the devices exploded or caught fire. Samsung traced the problem to a flaw in the phone's lithium battery, and issued a voluntary global recall. Samsung is offering to replace all 1 million devices already in the hands of consumers in 10 countries, and it's recalling the shipments of the Galaxy Note 7 that have already gone out. One country isn't included in the recall — China. The AP reports that, according to Samsung, the Galaxy Note 7s sold in China used a different battery that wasn't affected by the flaw. \"The recall, the first for the new smartphone, comes at a crucial moment in Samsung's mobile business,\" the AP reports. \"Apple is scheduled to announce its new iPhone next week, and Samsung's mobile division was counting on momentum from the Note 7's strong reviews and higher-than-expected demand.\" The Galaxy Note 7 has a large screen — some call it a \"phablet,\" part phone, part tablet — and is waterproof. Samsung hopes to resume sales once the battery problems are worked out. Koh Dong-jin, president of Samsung's mobile division, told reporters the problem that caused the faulty batteries was difficult to identify in quality control. The recall \"will cost us so much, it makes my heart ache,\" he said, according to the AP. \"Nevertheless, the reason we made this decision is because what is most important is customer safety.\" Samsung says it knows of at least 35 instances of exploding or burning batteries. No injuries have been reported, the AP says.", "Computer maker Hewlett-Packard next month will offer batteries that could outlast the laptops they power. The batteries are made by Boston Power, the first American company to break into a market dominated by the Japanese. The batteries don't have to be replaced as often as others and that is expected to reduce the impact to the environment. Curt Nickisch reports for member station WBUR. STEVE INSKEEP, host: Batteries for laptop computers are getting better. Next month, computer maker Hewlett-Packard will offer batteries that may, they say, outlast the laptop itself. They're made by a company called Boston-Power. It's the first U.S. company to break into a market dominated by the Japanese. For member station WBUR in Boston, Curt Nickisch reports. CURT NICKISCH: At the laboratory of Boston-Power, CEO Christina Lampe-Onnerud checks a testing station full of the cells that go into her company's batteries. Each is being spent and then recharged, over and over. Dr. CHRISTINA LAMPE-ONNERUD (CEO, Boston-Power): We're now testing cells that are still going strong at 1,400 cycles, at perfect condition. NICKISCH: Most conventional batteries peter out after just a few hundred charges. Lampe-Onnerud says they start out strong... Dr. LAMPE-ONNERUD: But then they only hold that for a few charges. And then they start failing. So, what really did you buy? NICKISCH: Since Boston-Power's batteries hold their juice longer, they don't have to be replaced as often. She says that reduces the environmental impact. Next month, HP will start shipping these batteries as an optional upgrade on new laptops, costing up to $30 more. Forrester Research analyst Chris Mines says that premium will be hard for most people to buy into. Mr. CHRISTOPHER MINES (Senior Vice President, Forrester Research): Consumers don't think about lifetime cost of ownership. They think about sticker price. NICKISCH: Still, Mines expects the number of green-minded battery buyers to amp up with time, the same way more car buyers nowadays are willing to fork over for hybrids. For NPR News, I'm Curt Nickisch in Boston.", "A week after admitting to intentionally slowing down older iPhones without telling customers, Apple is apologizing and slashing $50 off its normal $79 price to put a new battery into old phones. \"We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologize,\" the company said in announcing the change. It added that there has been \"a lot of misunderstanding about this issue.\" The $29 battery replacement price will apply to any out-of-warranty iPhone 6 or later and will begin to be available in late January, Apple says. The worldwide program will continue through December 2018. Apple is responding to criticisms that followed its confirmation last week of independent tests that showed processors in several models of iPhone 6 and 7 were slowed down if their owners had updated their devices' operating system, or iOS. Apple said it took the step to ease demands on older batteries to prevent the phones from shutting down suddenly. But many users aired their frustrations that the company would tinker with how their phones operate, saying that the admission confirmed long-held suspicions that new software was slowing down phones that were only one or two years old. And because the biggest changes to Apple's iOS usually come in tandem with a new iPhone model, the timing fed accusations that the approach also allowed Apple to use \"planned obsolescence\" to push customers to buy new phones. It was a Reddit post by a user named TeckFire that drove intense interest in Apple's battery strategy earlier this month, after the Redditor noticed that different versions of the iPhone 6 series were running at vastly different speeds — and that processor speeds picked up again if the battery was replaced. Confirming that dynamic, Apple says that \"when a chemically aged battery is replaced with a new one, iPhone performance returns to normal when operated in standard conditions.\" Apple has said that its phone batteries are meant to keep up to 80 percent of their capacity for 500 complete charges. But if a user was able to deplete and charge the phone every day, that would equal less than 18 months. The tech giant also says it will issue a new iOS update sometime in early 2018, \"with new features that give users more visibility into the health of their iPhone's battery, so they can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance.\"", "Apple is facing two class-action lawsuits over its practice of slowing down older iPhones. The practice was discovered earlier this week, but Apple says it&#8217;s doing it to help older batteries operate under newer processor demands. Here & Now&#8216;s Jeremy Hobson speaks with Ben Johnson (@TheBrockJohnson), senior producer of Endless Thread and a tech correspondent for Here & Now.", "Only last week I wrote about the Chuck E. Cheese's recall of some kids' toys because of risks posed if the batteries they contain get inside a child's body. The recall came only a few months after a study showed a big jump in injuries from batteries. The culprits in some of the worst injuries -- and deaths -- are thin button batteries. How bad are the injuries? A gruesome report on 10 cases in the latest issue of the Archives of Otolaryngoloy -- Head and Neck Surgery rather graphically describes the problems, including burns. Read More Kids with symptoms including chest pain, drooling and lethargy were found to have batteries in their throats. Half of the 10 children in the latest study had coughs. Because damage to the esophagus can happen quickly, the researchers says it's important for doctors to be on guard for the possibility that a battery could be to blame for children's symptoms. Often they're misdiagnosed as having respiratory infections. When the evidence suggests batteries might be inside, X-rays can help clinch the case. Then it's time to pull the batteries out and help the injuries heal. Sometimes that takes more surgery or use of a feeding tube.", "Apple says it slows the performance of older iPhones in an attempt to protect the aging lithium-ion batteries of those phones that can't keep up with the power demands of fast processors.", "The Federal Aviation Administration is warning U.S. travelers not to charge or use their Galaxy Note 7 smartphones during flight — and not to put them in checked baggage, either. The smartphones have been recalled by Samsung after some phones caught fire or exploded. The phonemaker says the problem has been traced to a flaw in the lithium battery. As we reported last week, \"Samsung is offering to replace all 1 million devices already in the hands of consumers in 10 countries, and it's recalling the shipments of the Galaxy Note 7 that have already gone out.\" Now the FAA says anyone waiting for their replacement should take precautions on planes. In light of the reported explosions and fires with the Note 7, \"the Federal Aviation Administration strongly advises passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft and not to stow them in any checked baggage,\" the agency said in a brief statement. The Associated Press describes the move as an \"extraordinary step.\" \"It is extremely unusual for the FAA to warn passengers about a specific product,\" the wire service notes. Passengers on flights used to be asked to turn off electronic devices before takeoff, but for several years now, the FAA has recommended that devices be allowed to remain on as long as they are in \"airplane mode\" and cellular service is disabled. The AP offers more background on the battery problem behind the recall and FAA warning: \"Rechargeable lithium batteries are more susceptible to overheating than other types of batteries if they are exposed to high temperatures, are damaged or have manufacturing flaws. Once the overheating starts, it can lead to \"thermal runaway\" in which temperatures continue escalating to very high levels. Water can extinguish the flames, but doesn't always halt the thermal runaway. Flames will often reappear after initially being quenched. \"Lithium batteries are ubiquitous in consumer electronic devices. Manufacturers like them because they weigh less and pack considerably more energy into the same space than other types of batteries.\"", "Apple is doing damage control after iPhone owners expressed outrage when the company admitted to intentionally slowing down older phones to preserve battery life. NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Will Oremus, who is covering the story for <em>Slate,</em> now that Apple has put out an unsigned apology.", "My fiance and I have a mild but ongoing debate about the best way to treat our rechargeable devices -- our phones, our laptops, that sort of thing. I come from the school that teaches recharges are finite, so let the device get pretty close to dead before plugging it in. He's less anal about things, and just plugs his phone in whenever a charger's handy. Love us some Farhad Manjoo. He, of course, has answers for our debate, because he knew who to call for answers: \"Isidor Buchmann, the CEO of Cadex Electronics, a Canadian company that makes battery-testing equipment. Buchmann also runs Battery University.\" Basically, Buchmann said whatever you do, your battery's going to die. OK. But how should we treat it before it gets there? Well, of course, it's complicated, but Manjoo gives us this basic rule of thumb for laptops, batteries and cameras: Keep the battery in the 20 percent to 80 percent range, and keep it cool. It's kind of elegant, because it means there are no big winners or losers in my household! Read the details, and why you should pop the battery out of your laptop when it's plugged in, in Manjoo's column here.", "Up to 2 million iPod owners will receive $50 coupons or extended warranties from Apple computer as the result of a class-action settlement. In 2003, eight customers sued Apple Computer, complaining that the portable music device's battery did not last as long as advertised.", "The Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a formal recall of 1 million Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones on Thursday. During a press conference, Chairman Elliot Kaye said consumers should \"take advantage of this recall right away\" because the phone represents such a \"serious fire hazard.\" Kaye said consumers should check the identifying number on the back of the phone at Samsung.com to determine whether their phone has a defective battery. If the phone is included in the recall, which almost all phones sold in the U.S. are, customers can take the phone back to Samsung directly or to their carrier to receive a refund or a replacement phone. \"That is a choice of the customer and customer's choice alone,\" Kaye said. Our friends at the All Tech Considered blog reported that some customers were having problems taking their phones back. Kaye said that now that the Consumer Product Safety Commission is involved, the recall procedure should be more streamlined. The Galaxy Note 7, which is waterproof, with a curved display and a stylus, was supposed to rival Apple's new iPhone. But, as All Tech reported, the release was marred by several dozen \"reports that the phones overheated and flared up, particularly while being charged.\" According to the CPSC, Samsung has received 92 reports of batteries overheating in the U.S., \"including 26 reports of burns and 55 reports of property damage, including fires in cars and a garage.\" The agency is advising affected consumers to power down their phones and return them to wherever they bought them.", "One of the hottest gifts of the season is a little too hot — hot enough to catch fire. Hoverboards have been burning up because of problems with their lithium-ion batteries. From smartphones and laptops, to Teslas and Boeing 787s, lithium-ion batteries are in a lot of our everyday tech. Jay Whitacre, a Professor of Materials Science & Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, says that by nature, all lithium-ion batteries have a flammable electrolyte in them. And while most hoverboards are made safely, Whitacre points to two reasons for why this gadget in particular is having these kind of problems. Their batteries are more powerful than those in a smartphone or laptop, and some of those are poor quality. \"I think a lot of them are using second-tier battery sources which are going to have probably a higher rate of defects,\" he says. \"These things have more lithium-ion batteries in them than most things because they're used to move you around. It takes more batteries to get you the power energy to do that and as such there's just more energy in a small space and so if something does go wrong, it's a bit more catastrophic.\" Because of that danger, he offers two precautions: Don't overcharge your hoverboard, and don't use or charge indoors. While this issue is even more uncommon in cellphones and laptops, big brand names have not been immune. Sony saw a lot of failures in its battery recall in 2006. But most of them, says Whitacre, \"the Apple, the computer suppliers that we typically buy from in the United States, usually have top quality batteries inside of them.\" But in the case of a fire with any device, he advises to put it in a non-flammable container like a bathtub and completely submerge it in water, as \"they burn very hot and very fast.\" While low, how does this threat fare on airplanes, with all the laptops and cellphones? \"Usually on an airplane you can contain it and it will maybe force a landing, but certainly not down the airplane,\" Whitacre says. \"Both the U.N. and the North American Transportation Authority have been very focused on increasing the scrutiny on lithium-ion battery air shipment and making the rules more stringent. And I think for good reason. If it's in an unmanned cargo holder that holds lots of cells next to each other and something goes wrong it can be a real problem.\"", "Product recalls are no laughing matter, but I've noticed that FDA releases this type of bad news at 4 pm or later, usually in a bunch. This makes it awfully hard to report on them or even to distinguish really bad stuff from medium-bad stuff. Today, the agency sent out an email at 4 p.m., notifying me that they have recalled certain Medtronic pacemakers. FDA says they may fail due to a loose wire connected to the battery, and that patient symptoms range from feeling faint to death. Sounds pretty serious to me, but if you click on it and scroll down, it will likely only affect 20,000 people. (You too can subscribe to the updates here.) Yet this notice is jammed in with dozens and dozens of email in my inbox about alfalafa, peanut and cashew recalls that seem less serious. How about a flagging system for what's really a big deal and what's not?", "The company cited new ignition switch problems and other issues, mostly in older midsize cars. The recall comes on the heels of an announcement about payments to families of those killed in crashes.", "A research company called iSuppli took apart an iPad and came up with an estimate of how much the components cost. Read More >> The bottom line for the 16-gig iPad, according to the company: $259.60. The full list of components and prices is pretty cool, in a nerdy way. The processor, manufactured by Samsung, costs $19.50; the battery costs $21.00; the display costs $65; etc. More broadly, iSuppli says that the iPad turns the traditional cost structure for laptops upside down. The cost of most laptops is driven by the processor and the circuit board (the stuff on the inside). But the iPad costs are driven by the interface -- the display, the touch-screen assembly, that sort of thing. Makes sense, when you think about it. This version of the iPad retails for $499; the markup is comparable to that on other Apple products, Bloomberg News said.", "A passenger on a flight from Beijing to Melbourne, Australia, was listening to music on her own personal headphones when the headphones suddenly caught fire, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau says. The ATSB assessed that the batteries within the headphones were probably the cause of the fire. The Australian safety agency released information about the incident on its website, omitting the woman's name and any details about the kind of headphones she was using. They quoted the woman's description of what happened, beginning with the loud explosion she heard while she was sleeping: \"As I went to turn around I felt burning on my face. ... I just grabbed my face which caused the headphones to go around my neck. \"I continued to feel burning so I grabbed them off and threw them on the floor. They were sparking and had small amounts of fire. \"As I went to stamp my foot on them the flight attendants were already there with a bucket of water to pour on them. They put them into the bucket at the rear of the plane.\" The ATSB says the battery and cover of the headphones melted to the floor of the aircraft, and the smell of melted plastic and burnt hair filled the aircraft. The press release doesn't identify the type of battery. But lithium-ion batteries, the kind widely used in rechargeable small electronics, have caused issues on planes before. Between March 1991 and December 2016, the Federal Aviation Administration documented 138 incidents at airports and in airplanes of devices smoking and catching on fire. The tally \"should not be considered as a complete listing,\" the agency says. Culprits included e-cigarette devices, laptops, loose batteries and small devices crushed in seat-adjusting mechanisms. There are several documented incidents of fires erupting on cargo planes carrying large volumes of lithium-ion batteries, causing at least one deadly crash. Last year, the U.N. urged national aviation regulators to ban such batteries from being carried as cargo on passenger planes. And the Galaxy Note 7, a Samsung smartphone whose lithium-ion batteries infamously caused explosions and fires, were banned on all U.S. flights months ago.", "Confirming iPhone owners' suspicions that Apple purposefully slows the operation of older phones, Apple says that it does just that — and that slowing down processors makes it easier for old batteries to perform after they've begun to lose capacity. Apple is responding to owners of older phones who have increasingly said they notice slower performance after they upgrade their devices' software. The difference was highlighted in a recent Reddit post — and it was quantified in a blog post at Geekbench, the processor bench-marking company. Older phones operate more quickly if they're using older versions of Apple's iOS operating system, Geekbench found. The slowdown affects a range of Apple phones, including the iPhone 7 and iPhone 6S, models that came out in 2016 and 2015, respectively. The company says it plans to apply the same strategy to \"other products in the future.\" Smartphones' lithium-ion batteries lose their pep as they age, but processors remain hungry for quick bursts of power. So, Apple used software to throttle the demand — effectively governing the speed at which the phones can operate. The situation is prickly: More than 10 years after Apple introduced its first iPhone, the company says it's trying to deliver the \"best experience\" to customers by preventing unexpected power-related shutdowns. In addition to addressing aging batteries, the company said it tries to \"smooth out\" power demand in phones that are operating in cold conditions or that have a low battery charge. But some customers say the company's strategy of dealing with the power demand pushes them to replace their older iPhones with newer models. In the Reddit post that generated intense interest in Apple's battery strategy earlier this month, a user named TeckFire reported that after noticing that different versions of the iPhone 6 series were running at vastly different speeds, they saw speeds pick up again once the battery on an iPhone 6S was replaced. That post triggered responses in which other Apple customers wondered whether the battery ploy was also to blame for their older Macbook laptops not working as well as they once had. Explaining how Apple's approach could feed suspicions of \"planned obsolescence,\" John Poole, founder of Geekbench parent Primate Labs, writes, \"users may believe that the slow down is due to [central processing unit] performance, instead of battery performance.\" Despite the battery being the reason that Apple is slowing the phones, Poole adds, \"This fix will also cause users to think, 'My phone is slow so I should replace it' not, 'My phone is slow so I should replace its battery.' \" The discrepancy between processors and batteries runs deep — and it's increasingly being highlighted, as lithium-ion batteries are recognized as not having much room for improvement. As Kristin Persson, a professor of materials and engineering at University of California, Berkeley, told Marketplace on Thursday morning, lithium-ion batteries are \"highly optimized,\" and researchers have been working on creating a better battery. Persson told Marketplace's Molly Wood: \"So if you compare batteries to, for example, computers, the difference is really that in batteries you have to invent new materials to make them better, whereas in semiconductors, you're inherently, most of the time, using the same materials and you're just making them smaller, which is easier.\" Here is Apple's statement on the battery/CPU issue: \"Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices. Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low battery charge or as they age over time, which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components. \"Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions. We've now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future.\"", "We tried to do our part for the retail industrial complex on Black Friday, really we did. But, in the end, practicality won out. Stupid practicality! For several months, my wife and I have been keeping an eye on prices of 13\" MacBook Pros. I use a white MacBook that's several years old and my wife has a hand-me-down iBook G4 that has a dead battery and feels heavier, clunkier and slower as the months pass. To use it, she has to keep it plugged in constantly, as if it were a misbehaving Rottweiler on a short leash. On Friday, it seemed the deals on the model we were looking at were as good as they're going to get. Apple discounted its entire product Mac line of products for the day and other Mac dealers had even deeper discounts (after mail-in rebates, which are not ideal, but do reward the extremely patient. We're pretty patient). A chart from Apple Insider that contained all the pricing information was temptation itself. We looked at the chart. We thought about it. And we didn't buy. My wife is due with our second child later this month. I find myself using my own laptop less and less as I use my smart phone around the house more and more. And, while an aluminum-bodied MacBook Pro would be a nice step up for me, I couldn't justify spending more than $1,500 (I always add on the 3-year Apple Care warranty) right now on a computer that we really don't need. We decided instead to wait it out a while longer, perhaps until next summer. My wife will use my MacBook more often instead of relying on the older, slower iBook. As an early adopter and someone who covers tech, I'm used to getting my hands on the latest devices. The Black Friday Mac deals were a gut check, but I'm glad we didn't pull the trigger. It's not always easy to separate want from need when it comes to the powerful, supernatural pull of Apple's marketing machine. But for us, right now, I think we made the right non-upgrade.", "Dog and now cat vitamins recalled due to salmonella. A child's coin purse recalled because of concerns about lead. Even Bridgestone tires for trucks and buses are on the recall track these days, not to mention the highly publicized SpaghettiOs' uh-oh and Kellogg's cereal recalls. At the risk of getting what the Washington Post dubs \"recall fatigue,\" how can you keep track of the ones you care about? There's now an app for that. Read More Instead of tracking down various websites, the new mobile app lets you see it all in one place, wherever you are. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Food and Drug Administration, and Department of Agriculture teamed up to create Recalls.gov. It lets consumers search for products by brand name or category (i.e. car seats or pet food), see available photos, and even report potential problems with unsafe products. \"Alerting consumers quickly to food and product recall information through this technology can prevent untold illness and save lives,\" said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in announcing the app, located on the newly-revamped GSA website. But there's a catch -- a big one. You have to have a phone that uses the Android operating system. Blackberry and iPhone apps are coming soon, the government says. Meanwhile, you can see the lists of recent recalls across the participating agencies here.", "About 6,000 Segway Human Transporters are being voluntarily recalled because some riders have been injured in falls when the motorized scooters' batteries ran low. The company is offering a free software upgrade to fix the problem. Hear NPR's Chris Arnold.", "U.S. government safety regulators are formally recalling 1 million of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones over dozens of cases of exploding batteries. The move comes two weeks after Samsung issued its own voluntary recall of 2.5 million devices in 10 countries. Samsung was initially praised for moving quickly, but conflicting information, delays in providing replacement phones, and lack of coordination with safety officials turned the voluntary recall into a stumble that drove down Samsung's stock price.", "A Russian computer security firm says it has discovered that about 600,000 Apple computers have been infected with a \"Flashback Trojan\" virus. Now, before we move on, you should know that the company making the announcement is Dr. Web, which sells anti-virus software that will protect a computer against that kind of virus. It's also important to note that many of the parties weighing in are part of a security community that makes money off selling anti-virus software. With that in mind: Phillip Elmer-Dewitt at Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog reports that the virus exploits a JavaScript vulnerability. Oracle released a patch in 2010 and after Apple got news that the virus was spreading, it released a fix in April. In the grand scheme of things, this doesn't seem like a huge outbreak. But, as the security experts at Sophos point out, this is the second time in a year that Apple systems have been infected with malware. Apple's operating systems are well known for not having many problems with viruses. But as Macs become more popular, it appears hackers are writing more viruses tailored for that operating system. Chester Wisniewski, at the Sophos blog, warns: \"First and foremost Mac users need to be sure they have installed the latest security patches from Apple. \"Second, Mac users can no longer rely on simply updating their computers. Preventative protection is an essential defense mechanism to detect and thwart future attacks.\" The virus — which gets into your computer if you visit an infected site — installs malware onto a computer and later sends information such as usernames and passwords to botnets. Dr. Web estimated that of 600,000 Macs infected, 57 percent were in the United States. We've contacted Apple for a response, but we have not heard back. We'll update if we get one. Also, Gizmodo has put together an easy step-by-step tutorial on how to check if your computer is infected.", "As soon as I pulled up the picture of these goofy light-up spectacles on my screen, a colleague with a young kid stopped and said, \"Hey, I think we have some of those. What's up?\" Well, what's up is 120,000 pairs of the glasses and 1.1 million light-up rings from Chuck E. Cheese's restaurants are a potential health hazard. Read More If a kid smashes them or pulls the plastic housing apart, the fragments can do some damage. But the bigger danger is from the small batteries inside, which can be hazardous inside the body. The Consumer Products Safety Commission says two kids have had problems with batteries from the light-up rings. In one case, a child swallowed a battery. In the other, the kid stuck a battery up his nose. No reports of trouble with the glasses, the CPSC says. For more details on the recall, you can see this round-up from the CPSC. Chuck E. Cheese's also has more info here, including instructions on how to get a refund. Even if the toys look OK, and despite the fact they have \"passed applicable consumer product safety standards,\" Chuck E. Cheese's says kids shouldn't play with them anymore. Tiny batteries are an increasingly common hazard for children. Thin button batteries can cause serious burns. A recently published analysis of more than 8,600 calls to a national hotline since 1990 found that 94 percent of ingestion incidents reported involved button batteries.", "Samsung announced the results of a months-long investigation into why its Galaxy Note 7 phones spontaneously caught fire last summer, pinning the blame on faulty batteries. The bungled launch led to a recall of 2.5 million devices and losses totaling more than $2 billion. The root cause, according to an internal investigation conducted with the help of outside experts, was battery short circuits. Both companies that supplied batteries for the Galaxy Note 7 had separate issues leading to the fires, Samsung says, in part due to the rush to replace the originally exploding phones with new ones. The company did not name its battery suppliers. \"The comprehensive responsibility lies with us. We did not thoroughly vet the parts that were assembled for us,\" said DJ Koh, the head of Samsung's sprawling mobile unit. In a packed press conference at its offices in southern Seoul Monday, the world's biggest smartphone maker again apologized to customers around the world for the bungling of its product release. Phones were initially recalled and replaced, but the replacement devices also began to catch fire. Presentations at the announcement by outside investigators backed up Samsung's findings, which indicate batteries from supplier A were shorting because of a design flaw or in some cases a lack of insulation tape. And batteries from supplier B — which were issued in the replacement phones following the initial recall — were catching fire because of a separate manufacturing defect. \"We wanted to proceed quickly to change the batteries swiftly, out of concern for the consumers,\" Koh said, explaining why the company rushed to replace the faulty phones. \"We are very sorry to the consumers for not having vetted the B batteries thoroughly. At the time the B batteries didn't exhibit the problems that A batteries did, but in retrospect the B batteries had a different issue.\" U.S. safety authorities are conducting their own investigation into this matter. Customers and investors will be closely watching how the company adjusts to prevent another fiasco of this size. Samsung announced a new \"eight-point\" product safety protocol that it says will ensure quality of its products going forward. It is set to release the Galaxy S8 device, the closest competitor to the Apple iPhone, in the coming months. The Note line may be forever discontinued. Meanwhile, tomorrow the South Korean giant will announce its fourth-quarter earnings, which is expected to be the company's best performance in three years, despite the loss on the Note 7 devices. The uptick is thanks to robust sales of chips and screens, analysts say. Haeryun Kang contributed to this post.", "Tesla is building the biggest battery factory in the world. It hopes to drive battery prices down so far that lithium ion batteries are no longer just for laptops, phones or cars.", "More than 500,000 balancing scooters — better known as hoverboards, though they do no hovering — are being recalled because of the risk of fire or explosions. The devices were extremely popular gifts this past holiday season. Online, they were hits in viral dance videos ... and in less-impressive videos of people falling off their new toys. But hoverboards made headlines for another reason — some of them were apparently catching on fire. Now several manufacturers and retailers are recalling the devices over the hazard, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced Wednesday — adding that many devices not included in the recall should be discarded for consumers' safety. \"There have been at least 99 incident reports of the battery packs in self-balancing scooters/hoverboards overheating, sparking, smoking, catching fire and/or exploding,\" the CPSC says, \"including reports of burn injuries and property damage.\" The full list of recalled devices is at the CPSC site. They were all sold within the last year or so, for between $350 and $900. About 501,000 devices are involved in the recall. The CPSC advises people who own a recalled hoverboard to stop using it, and to reach out to the manufacturer or retailer for a refund, repair or replacement, depending on what the company is offering. And if your hoverboard isn't on the list? \"Contact the manufacturer or retailer and demand that they give you your money back,\" CPSC Chairman Elliot Kaye said in a statement. Unless the manufacturer can show that the device has been certified as safe by Underwriters Laboratories, it should be considered \"a fire hazard waiting to happen,\" he wrote. Hoverboards sold on AliExpress.com and Alibaba.com by third parties will be certified by testing agencies from now on, the CPSC says. Last December, as reports were emerging of self-combusting hoverboards, Carnegie Mellon University's Jay Whitacre spoke to NPR about what can cause such fires. Whitacre, a professor of materials science and engineering, explained that lithium-ion batteries have a flammable electrolyte in them. In most products, including in most hoverboards, the batteries are safe. But powerful, poor-quality batteries can be dangerous, he said. \"I think a lot of [hoverboard makers] are using second-tier battery sources, which are going to have probably a higher rate of defects,\" he said. \"These things have more lithium-ion batteries in them than most things because they're used to move you around. It takes more batteries to get you the power ... to do that and as such there's just more energy in a small space. And so if something does go wrong, it's a bit more catastrophic.\" Whitacre advised consumers not to overcharge their hoverboards, and never to charge them or use them indoors. Now, depending on the model, owners may have a third precautionary option: Sending the 'board back for a refund.", "I kind of think of Philz Coffee in Palo Alto, Calif., as the epicenter of Apple fanatics. It's so hip, only hand-poured specialty blends are sold here. Every day dozens of techie types come to Philz for coffee and then lounge around on the leather sofa sipping away, often with Apple products scattered in front of them. Yeliz Ustabas has an Apple laptop perched next to her and an iPhone balanced on her knee. Normally, Ustabas says she's pretty quick to buy the latest thing Apple has to offer. But this morning, before Apple unveiled the iPhone 5, she said this time she might wait to purchase the new smartphone. \"For now, the 4S seems better. So I am going to wait a little bit I guess,\" Ustabas said. The reason is the new phone's new connector. Since its debut five years ago, all iPhones have used the same kind of port for charging and docking. An entire industry of iPhone accessories has grown up around this simple little plug. Scores of different companies sell speakers — docking stations, adapters for car radios and chargers — and they were all built for the old plug. And iPhone accessories are big business. Michael Morgan, who follows the industry for ABI Research, says sales of accessories total $5 billion to $10 billion a year. Not all iPhone accessories will have to be redesigned because of the new plug and cord — old headphones and speakers that use Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to connect are fine — but pretty much everything else will need to be tweaked or require an adapter to work. Now Apple is making these adapters, but true Apple freaks will need dozens. If you have built your electronic life around an iPhone that could be kind of annoying — and expensive. \"If you are on the road and you are traveling, it's just another thing to get lost,\" says Andrea Seebaum, an iPhone user in San Francisco. But Apple didn't make this change just to mess with you. Morgan says there are good reasons Apple changed this little plug. \"They held out for five years. You might say they were due,\" he says. A smaller plug makes room for a bigger battery. Although Apple calls the new plug the \"Lightning connector,\" NPR's Laura Sydell, who was at the Apple event, tells me syncing your iPhone with this connection will be no faster than the older, bigger version. The new design is 80 percent smaller and Apple says it's easier to use. (But was the old version that hard? It's a plug after all.) Changing the cord probably made Apple's new thinner design possible but it creates an odd dynamic for consumers thinking about buying the new phone. While the change is a headache for some consumers it's a business opportunity for accessory makers. Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, told the audience in San Francisco that JBL, Bose, Bang & Olufsen and B&W are already building new speakers for the new phone. And for those Apple fans who have to have the iPhone 5 but have lots of accessories they want to keep, Apple will sell a variety of adapters too — they'll range from $19 to $39 each. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: While the iPhone 5 has a number of new features to entice customers, NPR's Steve Henn reports a new cord could tie Apple's most devoted fans in knots. STEVE HENN, BYLINE: I kind of think of Philz Coffee in Palo Alto as the epicenter of Apple fanatics. It's hip. In fact, it's so hip it's too hip for espresso drinks. Only hand-poured specialty blends are sold here. Could I get a decaf Swiss water organic Peru? UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Absolutely. HENN: Every day, dozens of techie types come here for coffee and then lounge around on the leather sofa sipping away, often with Apple products scattered out in front of them. Yeliz Ustabas has an Apple laptop perched next to her and an iPhone balanced on her knee. How many Apple gadgets do you think you own? YELIZ USTABAS: You know what, I don't know. (LAUGHTER) USTABAS: A lot. HENN: Normally, Yeliz says she's pretty quick to buy the latest thing Apple has to offer. But this morning, before Apple unveiled its new phone, she said this time, she might wait. USTABAS: For now, 4S seems better. (LAUGHTER) USTABAS: So I'm going to wait a little bit, I guess, so. HENN: The reason is the new phone's new connector. Since its debut more than five years ago, all of Apple's iPhones have used the same kind of port for charging and docking. And since then, an entire industry of iPhone accessories has grown up around this simple little plug. Scores of different companies sell speakers, docking stations, adapters for car radios, battery packs and other stuff. IPhone accessories are big business. MICHAEL MORGAN: You could see anywhere from five to $10 billion a year in revenues. HENN: Michael Morgan follows the industry for ABI Research. He says not all iPhone accessories will have to be redesigned because of the new plug and cord. Old headphones are fine, so are speakers that use Bluetooth or wireless to connect. But pretty much everything else will need to be tweaked or require an adapt", "Boeing announced late Friday that it is postponing deliveries of its new 787 Dreamliner because of problems with its big batteries. Aviation authorities in the U.S. and abroad grounded the new jetliners after those batteries failed in two planes operated by Japanese airlines, including one battery that burned while the plane was on the ground. These lithium-ion batteries are new to jetliners. They're powerful and lightweight, and, unfortunately, they're also fragile. \"Everyone's carrying a lithium-ion battery in their pocket today,\" says chemical engineer Vince Battaglia at Lawrence Berkeley Lab in Berkeley, Calif. They're in cellphones, laptops, cameras — small electrical devices thrive on them. \"And there's not a big issue\" about them going up in flames now and then. Lithium-ion batteries produce twice the voltage traditional batteries do. And when they go bad, that power turns into heat. The reason it's not such a big deal, Battaglia says, is that the batteries are usually smaller than a pinkie. \"The energy is small. It's easy to get the heat out of that little battery\" A small battery loses its heat quickly. But if you supersize that battery, up to, say, the size of a big suitcase, it's harder to get rid of the heat. \"When you go to these bigger cells, you've got all the heat in one cell,\" Battaglia says. \"You've got to get it out.\" You do that by using fans or circulating a coolant around the battery. That works fine so long as the battery is intact. But chemical engineers know that lithium-ion batteries have an Achilles' heel for two reasons. One is the fluid inside the battery, called the electrolyte. Positive and negative ions flow back and forth through the electrolyte, which creates electricity. In normal batteries the electrolyte is an acidic water. In lithium-ion batteries, it's a flammable organic compound. Donald Sadoway, an engineer with MIT, notes that \"if you do get up to temperature, you've got fuel there. It'll burn.\" And you can get high temperature because of the second weakness. It's a thin membrane inside the battery that it regulates the flow of ions in that electrolyte fluid. If that membrane breaks, the flow of ions gets out of control and the fluid heats up. \"You breach that membrane,\" says Sadoway, \"and now you've got two compounds that want to react with each other violently, and there's nothing to prevent them from doing so.\" If it gets hot enough, the electrolyte fluid vaporizes and escapes. Think of that brandy you pour into a hot skillet and light up for a little flambe. Laptop batteries sometimes burn like this. And one of Chevrolet's Volt electric cars did. After a controlled crash test, the battery's electrolyte got loose and burned the car to a crisp. Berkeley's Battaglia says these batteries are pretty delicate. He says he'd drive a car with lithium-ion battery, but he worries about what happens when that internal membrane gets damaged. \"If I got into an accident, I wouldn't take it into my garage and plug it in,\" he says. But Sadoway at MIT says these batteries certainly can be used safely. \"We know what the possible failure modes are, and they are defendable,\" he says. \"You can make these lithium-ion batteries absolutely bulletproof, safe and everything else, but the question is, what's your price point?\" Who's willing to pay the cost, compared to other batteries? That price point may be too high for the auto industry. John Hanson, Toyota's environmental and safety manager, says the company uses them in its all-electric vehicles. The company trusts them. But Toyota is looking for alternatives. \"The only thing we have against lithium is that in order to go to the next step in developing vehicles that the mass market will buy,\" he says, \"they have to be less expensive and they have to deliver more range, and we can't get that from lithium.\" Their future in airplanes, however, likely hangs on what engineers learn from the two incidents on the Dreamliner. ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: Boeing announced late today that it's postponing deliveries of its new 787 Dreamliner because of problems with the aircraft's big batteries. Aviation authorities in the U.S. and abroad grounded the new plane this week after those batteries failed, possibly overheating, on two planes operated by Japanese airlines. One battery burned while the plane was on the ground. These lithium-ion batteries are new to jetliners. As NPR's Christopher Joyce reports, they are powerful, lightweight and fragile. CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Lithium-ion batteries are all around us. VINCE BATTAGLIA: Everyone's carrying a lithium ion battery in their pocket today and there's not a big issue. JOYCE: Vince Battaglia is a chemical engineer at Lawrence Berkeley Lab in California. The batteries are in cell phones, laptops, cameras. They produce twice the voltage traditional batteries do. And when they go bad, that power turns into heat. Battaglia says this is not a big issue because the batteries usually are smaller than your p", "Like every year, it seems like the entire tech world has decamped and headed to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, which kicks off tomorrow. All Things Considered's Audie Cornish spoke to NPR's Steve Henn, who gave her a quick rundown of what we're expecting. Here are some highlights: -- The big pre-CES story has been that Microsoft will no longer participate in the event after this year. That means two of the biggest technology firms in the world — Microsoft and Apple — have pulled out. Steve said Microsoft believes it can get more attention for itself by announcing new products outside the show, like Apple has done. So what does it mean for CES? Steve told Audie that it still leaves thousands of other firms in Las Vegas and he believes that, in the end, those small companies are the more interesting ones. -- Steve reports that this year everyone wants \"control of your living room.\" Meaning that companies like Apple and Google want you to stream content from the Internet. The device manufacturers are getting in on the action, said Steve. Lenovo is introducing its first TV that runs using Google's operating system and has built-in webcams. But here's the kicker: The TV will know who you are using facial recognition. As, Audie put it, \"now my TV will be watching me?\" Steve reports that the reason is so the TV can really enforce parental controls but Steve says another reason your TV might want to know who is sitting in front of it is so it can show you finely targetted advertisements. USA Today has more on the television set, which also responds to voice commands. -- One other thing that seems to be making headlines across the web is the introduction of ultrabooks, which Arstechnica describes as \"thin, light, MacBook Air-like laptops that Intel hopes will stimulate the PC market.\" The BBC reports that Intel vice president Mooly Eden demoed ultrabooks that featured touchscreens and were convertible from a traditional laptop to a tablet. Some future computers, Eden said, will also have sensors that will allow the notebook to be controled by \"touch-free gestures or by tilting the machine.\" CNet posted this video of Eden's presentation: We'll post the as-aired interview with Steve a little later tonight.", "Picture this: You're at a park, on a walk, with a baby. A friendly middle-aged man approaches you and tells you your stroller could be really dangerous. You might think this man is crazy. But maybe not if you knew he's the nation's product safety chief. \"I couldn't live with myself if I walked away and it turned out that that child was harmed when I could've just said something,\" Elliot Kaye says. His voice is soft-spoken and his worldview seems to fluctuate between pride in saving lives and the unease of someone who has seen many things go wrong in unexpected ways. \"You can't help it; you just automatically see the hazards.\" Kaye is the chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. It's an agency that indeed typically gets the spotlight when things go wrong — when furniture topples over toddlers, when window blinds strangle children, or, more recently, when smartphones explode. And to many, the CPSC is the recall agency. But considering how tiny it is, its mission is vast. With the exception of cars, food, medications and a few other things, for thousands of products we buy and assume someone in the government has made sure they are safe — cribs, lawn mowers, toasters, power tools, washing machines, office chairs — that someone is the CPSC. A major category under CPSC's scrutiny is electronics. And increasingly in recent years, there's been the matter of batteries. They've overheated or caught fire in laptops, baby monitors, flashlights and, of course, those electric \"hoverboard\" scooters and Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 phones. Lithium-ion batteries are a known troublemaker — and a subject of numerous standards and international regulations. But the incidents keep cropping up. \"This is the way standards normally work,\" Kaye says. \"They identify a problem that is probably not a problem that needs to be solved in the future, and they're really good at making sure that thing never happens again, but then new problems have developed.\" In October, Kaye introduced a new initiative to help the agency get a broader understanding of the battery industry and how to prevent rather than resolve hazards. But then came the election and its unexpected result. Under President Donald Trump in 2017, Kaye is expected to step down as chairman to become a commissioner. \"My hope is now with the election and potential leadership change here, that that work is not scuttled,\" Kaye says. Competitive pressures The counters of the CPSC lab space are lined with large and medium-sized bins like rows of evidence boxes. Leaning into an open plastic container, you can smell that unmistakable metallic odor of old batteries. Inside the containers are electric hoverboard scooters and their battery packs, in varied stages of burn damage. Doug Lee is holding out one exhibit. This battery pack burned up — scattering into scorched empty cylinders, like rusted shell casings. \"Typically, they just all go one by one,\" he says. \"One goes into thermal runaway, and that sets off the others.\" Lee is an electrical engineer and the battery guru at the CPSC testing lab, called the National Product Testing and Evaluation Center. This is where police, fire, customs and other officials often send in troublesome products — sometimes hand-delivered in a cross-country relay. After a massive recall, hoverboards and their packaging are everywhere in the workshop. This lab is also where government engineers are still testing some Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones. Lee and other CPSC officials declined to share any details of that investigation because it's ongoing. CPSC officials say they have concluded the review of the original batch of Note 7s, accepting Samsung's explanation that the rounded-corner design of the battery triggered problems. Faults in connections between positively and negatively charged electrodes can result in short-circuits. But government engineers are still investigating what caused fires in the Note 7s that were issued later as replacements, after Samsung said it switched battery suppliers. Samsung says its own investigation is ongoing. The company hasn't disclosed what went wrong beyond originally citing a small manufacturing problem. \"We all want batteries that are smaller, that are more powerful, that discharge more slowly and charge more quickly,\" Kaye says. \"And I think that that might be pushing up against design limitations and certainly tightness of manufacturing restrictions of trying to get it right. \"You could have a great standard and you can have a great system in place,\" he adds, \"but if there are competitive pressures that push manufacturers ... to their limits — which I think we may or may not have seen in the most recent instance — then those things go out the window.\" \"Only trying to protect people\" The CPSC oversees the safety of some 15,000 product categories. It has a staff of 567. Fewer than 10 people work on its Internet surveillance team, tasked with ensuring that recalled products aren't sold online. The agency's budg" ]

[ "jeopardy/1607_Qs.txt at master jedoublen/jeopardy GitHub AIRPORTS | A general aviation airport 12 miles south of Dayton, Ohio is named for ... AIRPORTS | Kalamazoo, Michigan shares its airport with this \"Cereal City\"...", "Battle Creek, Michigan - Wikipedia Battle Creek is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan, in northwest Calhoun County, at the confluence of the Kalamazoo ... The city was noted for its focus on health reform during the late 1800s and early ... Battle Creek has been nicknamed \"Cereal City. ..... Kalamazoo's Kalamazoo-Battle Creek International Airport serves Battle...", "This first U.S. civilian airport designed specifically for commercial ... Jun 29, 2016 ... Indira Gandhi International Airport lies just outside this capital ... Kalamazoo, Michigan shares its airport with this Cereal City # Quiz # Question.", "Lillie Training & Inspiration - Timeline | Facebook (269) 720-3556 ... Owned by Cereal City Athletics and powered by Lillie Inspired! Cereal City Triathlon/Duathlon. The 2016 Cereal City Triathlon showcases the City of Battle Creek and its amenities. .... When you are in the airport with a USA Olympic Team Sweatshirt on and a ..... Personal Trainers in Kalamazoo, Michigan.", "Jeopary Questions page 1425 - TO TELL THE TRUCE - TriviaBistro ... 6-LETTER WORDS: It's a spicy nickname for a redhead A WORLD OF MUSIC: .... AIRPORTS: Kalamazoo, Michigan shares its airport with this \"Cereal City\"." ]

[ "Breakfast cereal - Topics Breakfast cereal (or just cereal ) is a food product made from processed grains that ... in some markets, and steady and continued growth throughout its history. .... Because of Kellogg and Post, the city of Battle Creek, Michigan is nicknamed the ..... does not contain actual blueberries or pomegranate) These varieties provide...", "Battle Creek, Michigan - Wikipedia Battle Creek is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan, in northwest Calhoun County, at the .... Battle Creek has been nicknamed \"Cereal City.\" .... American, 2.4% Asian, 2.7% from other races, and 4.3% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 6.7% of the population. .... 2010 World's Longest Breakfast Table.", "Detroit Metropolitan Airport - Wikipedia Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (IATA: DTW, ICAO: KDTW), usually called Detroit .... In 2009 Detroit Metro Airport launched its first social media efforts with ... The McNamara Terminal, also once known as the Northwest WorldGateway, ..... Bishop International Airport Detroit Region Aerotropolis Michigan World...", "Antique Kelloggs Corn Flakes Cereal Box 1920s | Cereal Boxes ... Mar 26, 2016 ... Kellogg's was founded in Battle Creek, Michigan on February 19, 1906. ...... 22 Amazing Cereal Desserts That Will Blow Your Family's Minds ..... Will Kellogg founder of the Kellogg Company ~ Battle Creek Michigan - April 7, 1860 ..... Here is a box of Sugar Pops (the word corn omitted) with Guy Madison as...", "Michigan Facts for Children | A to Z Kids Stuff Resources and activities for school age children on the state of Michigan. ... The Great Lakes contain the largest supply of fresh water on earth; 20% of the ... Today, Battle Creek produces more breakfast cereal than any other city in the world.", "WI 04 - State of Michigan area, and the Battle Creek Township well field, produce most ... Water levels have declined less than a foot or two over most ... the city expanded this field, it placed the other well field ... famous for the manufacturing of breakfast cereals, its .... some wells, no samples of drill cuttings were obtained ... In most places, water can.", "Bishop International Airport - Wikipedia Bishop International Airport (IATA: FNT, ICAO: KFNT) is a commercial and general aviation airport located in Flint, Michigan. It is named after banker and General Motors board member Arthur Giles ... On August 29, 2013, the airport received a $2.87 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation, which was used to...", "An A to Z list of Michigan colleges and universities | MLive.com Sep 2, 2011 ... 1903 Marquette Ave. ... Muskegon campus houses Culinary Institute of Michigan. ... Campuses in Lansing and Jackson in addition to Kalamazoo. ... Four-year public university on urban campus in Ypsilanti. ... Only private university in the Upper Peninsula, and the northern-most college in Michigan.", "Bishop International Airport: Flint, Michigan: Flights & Airport Travel Bishop International Airport (FNT) is \"The smart way to fly.\" Flint offers the lowest average airfares in Michigan and guarantees you all of the destination options...", "Mobile Kalamazoo News - MLive.com Nov 29, 2015 ... KALAMAZOO, MI Rupert's Brew House once again has a dog to greet its ... There's no special significance to Uncle Bill's name, other than Rupert ... \"It's going to be a lot to handle but luckily a lot of the community has already ... Collins said KVCC has been in discussions with groups such as the West...", "Jeopary Questions page 2118 - K.K. - TriviaBistro.com AIRPORT NAMES: The Flint, Michigan airport is named for Arthur Bishop, who was on this company's board for 29 years NOVELS: In \"The Master\", Colm Tibn...", "On the Beat | Michigan Matters | Findings Spring 2012 | University of ... Michigan's a great place, especially if you want to dig into issues like the environment ... No state east of the Mississippi has more public land than the 7.7 million acres of ... has hosted more pollution- and health-related studies than any other in the nation. ... Kellogg's, inventor of the breakfast cereal, is based in Battle Creek.", "Inventor Will Keith Kellogg Biography - The Great Idea Finder Jun 30, 2006 ... In 1906 he founded the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company which later ... Death: October 6, 1951 in Battle Creek, Michigan .... In 1930, W. K. Kellogg, the famed breakfast cereal magnate from Battle Creek, Michigan,...", "Michigan Colleges | Michigan Universities | Community Colleges ... Colleges, Community Colleges, & Universities in Michigan, USA(MI, USA). Index to ... Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Washtenaw, Public ... Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo, Private ... Northern Michigan University, Marquette, Marquette, Public ... Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Ottawa, Private...", "The Upjohn Company facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia ... SICs: 2834 Pharmaceutical Preparations; 2833 Medicinis and Botanicals; 2830 ... of the Upjohn Pill and Granule Co., founded in Kalamazoo in 1886 by Upjohn and ... herbs and flowers he cultivated at his country home in Augusta, Michigan. ... The Upjohn Company's attachment to Kalamazoo has been strengthened by...", "February - Historical Society of Michigan Day. Year Events. 1 FEB 1813 After Detroit was captured in War of 1812, ... 1 FEB 1967 Michigan became the first state to have a border-to-border ... 2 FEB 1846 The first regular train service between Kalamazoo and Detroit ... 4 FEB. 1902 Charles Lindberg, the first pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, was born in.", "Milwaukee General Mitchell Airport (MKE) Information: MKE Airport ... Taxis and limos also run to the city and its many districts, such as East Town, ... on the banks of Lake Michigan, being known as the beer capital of America and...", "The Lions are dropping more passes than anybody in the NFL ... 1 day ago ... Ann Arbor; Bay City; Detroit; Flint; Grand Rapids; Jackson; Kalamazoo; Lansing; Muskegon; Saginaw; All Michigan. Menu. Home; Set Your Edition Michigan .... \"It's something that's a point of emphasis, and it's something that's...", "1991 Kellogg's Major League Baseball | CEREAL | Pinterest | Baseball Kellog was born in Battle Creek, Michigan on April 7, 1860. .... The book underwent various edition changes and was last offered to consumers in 1937. ..... [PHOTO] Mystery Find In Cereal Box Left Man Wondering 'Do I Open The Bag?' .... This moisturizer makes my skin so soft and eliminates dry, flaky skin and recipe is...", "Western Michigan University - Wikipedia Western Michigan University (WMU) is a public research university located in Kalamazoo, ... The three other normal schools were in Ypsilanti (Eastern), Mount Pleasant (Central), and Marquette (Northern). Kalamazoo was chosen as the new...", "Bangor International Airport - Wikipedia 15/33, 11,440, 3,487, Asphalt. Bangor International Airport (IATA: BGR, ICAO: KBGR) is a joint civil-military public airport on ... On Aug. 19, 1923, 15 Martin Bombers and 11 DeHaviland Scout Planes under the ... into the 1990s, the airport attracted 3,000 to 5,000 commercial flights a year, .... 4, Detroit, Michigan, 30,000, Delta.", "Memories of The Upjohn Company Memories of The Upjohn Company, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA. ... information about The Upjohn Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan (1886-1995) ** What's .... This non-profit history website is not owned by or affiliated with Pfizer in any way.", "Top Universities in Michigan | 2016 Reviews & Rankings List of top Universities and Colleges in Michigan by the 2016 4icu.org University Web ... 5, Western Michigan University. Kalamazoo ... Ypsilanti ... 9, Oakland University ... 12, Northern Michigan University. Marquette. 13, Baker College...", "Kellogg's - Wikipedia The Kellogg Company is an American multinational food manufacturing company headquartered in Battle Creek, ... Kellogg's was founded as the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company on February 19, 1906, by Will .... The name Toppas is still applied to this product in other parts of Europe, as in Germany and Austria)...", "The Battle of the Cornflakes | History Today The Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, later to be known as Kellog's, was ... were brothers from a Seventh-day Adventist family in Battle Creek, Michigan. ... W.K., who was eight years younger, started experimenting with cereals. ... In 1911 W.K. succeeded in a lawsuit to gain exclusive use of the Kellogg name in the...", "Availability of Water in Kalamazoo County, Southwestern Michigan ______ 105. Augusta-Galesburg. ..... most uses; however, it is Usually very hard and may contain objectionable amounts of .... This study was initiated in 1964, when lake and ground-water ... largely because of the influence of Lake Michigan and differences in ... Marshes in Kalamazoo County are characterized by decayed.", "Upjohn - Wikipedia The Upjohn Company was a pharmaceutical manufacturing firm founded in 1886 in Kalamazoo, Michigan by Dr. William E. Upjohn, an 1875 graduate of the...", "Visiting the Final Resting Spots of Sojourner Truth and the Kellogg ... Aug 7, 2016 ... I was perhaps most surprised by the grave of Sojourner Truth. ... her life only an hour from where I grew up, in Battle Creek, MI, a city that ... was the Cereal Capital of the world (Kellogg's cereal was founded there, and is still manufactured there). ... I found the Sojourner Truth marker fairly easily; it is near the...", "Michigan Colleges and Universities - Colleges Search by State ... Search Michigan colleges and universities and get exclusive insights on ... Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Oakland University in Rochester Hills, Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, and...", "Lake Michigan | lake, United States | Britannica.com Bordered by the states of Michigan (east and north), Wisconsin (west),. ... Approximately 100 streams flow into the lake, only a few of which are of ... White, Muskegon, Grand, Kalamazoo, and St. Joseph rivers enter the lake from the east. ... Other major lake ports include Michigan City (Ind.); Waukegan (Ill.); Kenosha, Racine,...", "Springfield's state - Wikisimpsons, the Simpsons Wiki Jul 18, 2016 ... Springfield's state is an American state. ... Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, ... Although not landlocked, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, ... The capital of Kentucky, Frankfort, has an airport which is called \"Capital City Airport\" and is located...", "Midwest Airlines - Wikipedia Midwest Airlines (formerly Midwest Express) was a U.S.-based airline and, for a short time, an .... The signature gourmet meal services, which had been served on china after ... served 21 cities non-stop (serving San Antonio only through Kansas City), .... Midwest became a wholly owned subsidiary of Republic Airways and..." ]

[ "Marcus Williams has been called up to the San Antonio Spurs, apparently taking the spot of Manu Ginobili, who was recently lost for the season." ]

[ "The San Antonio Spurs today announced that they have assigned center Aron Baynes to the Austin Toros of the NBA Development League.", "The San Antonio Spurs today announced that they have assigned Kawhi Leonard to the Austin Toros of the NBA Development League for a medical rehab assignment.", "The San Antonio Spurs today announced that they have waived forward Derrick Brown and center Eddy Curry.", "The San Antonio Spurs say they have re-signed French forward Boris Diaw for the coming NBA season.", "The San Antonio Spurs announced today that they have recalled guard/forward Alonzo Gee and guard Curtis Jerrells from the Austin Toros, the NBA Development League team owned and operated by the Spurs.", "The San Antonio Spurs today announced that they have exercised the third-year options on guard Cory Joseph and forward Kawhi Leonard.", "San Antonio Spurs center Ian Mahinmi yesterday underwent successful arthroscopic surgery on his right ankle.", "A Manu Ginobili injury update is bad news for the San Antonio Spurs vs. New Orleans Hornets game on Wednesday night.", "SAN ANTONIO Denver Nuggets guard Allen Iverson has a small fracture on his right ring finger but played against the San Antonio Spurs on Monday night.", "The San Antonio Spurs have signed veteran forward Tracy McGrady, adding depth and experience as the playoffs arrive.", "The uniform groaning you may have heard recently came from every single San Antonio Spurs fan as it was announced that Manu Ginobili will soon be having surgery on his ankle.", "US national team coach Juergen Klinsmann has called up German-based Danny Williams for the friendly international games against Honduras and Ecuador.", "The San Antonio Spurs today announced that they have re-signed guard Patty Mills.", "San Antonio Spurs guard Manu Ginobili is expected to miss 10-14 days with a left hamstring strain.", "Bucks center Andrew Bogut is returning to the United States on Sunday and is expected to be ready to play for Milwaukee on Tuesday against the San Antonio Spurs, his agent, David Bauman, said.", "Jackson had 34 points and eight assists in his best game since joining Milwaukee in an offseason trade, leading the Bucks to a 106-103 victory over the San Antonio Spurs on Tuesday night.", "It's sounding more and more likely that San Antonio Spurs swingman Kawhi Leonard will miss Team USA's training camp in Las Vegas this July.", "The San Antonio Spurs waived forward Stephen Jackson on Friday, ending his second stint with the team.", "Los Angeles Clippers guard Mo Williams returned to the lineup against Minnesota on Thursday night after missing the previous 11 games with a sprained big toe on his left foot.", "Orlando Magic guard Jason Williams will undergo arthroscopic surgery tomorrow on his left knee, General Manager Otis Smith announced.", "San Antonio Spurs guard TJ Ford is retiring from the NBA, effective immediately, because of a series of head and neck injuries.", "San Antonio Spurs executive Danny Ferry was offered the Atlanta Hawks general manager position.", "Point guard Jason Williams' agent, Dan Tobin, said Monday that he is still talking with the Magic about Williams filling the club's back-up role behind Jameer Nelson.", "San Antonio have beaten Dallas 92-91 to clinch a NBA playoff spot, while Portland have downed the New York Knicks 105-90.", "Utah Jazz guard Deron Williams will miss at least two weeks after spraining his ankle in a preseason game against the Chicago Bulls on Saturday.", "Mustafa Shakur, a 6-foot-3 point guard, is expected to be called up from the NBA D-League's Rio Grande Valley Vipers to the Washington Wizards for a 10-day contract, according to a source close to the situation.", "High-scoring Milwaukee point guard Mo Williams is headed to Cleveland to become James' new backcourt mate as part of a three-team trade involving Milwaukee and Oklahoma City.", "The LA Lakers have ended their five-game losing streak with a 102-93 win over the San Antonio Spurs, but the victory was marred by a knee injury to the starting centre Andrew Bynum.", "New Jersey Nets guard Deron Williams has signed a contract worth about $5 million to play with Besiktas of Turkey on Friday, pending the NBA lockout.", "Sonny Bill Williams will have no hesitation in answering an SOS call from Steve Hansen to put on the black jersey for two more tests.", "Kobe Bryant was back but the Lakers trailed the San Antonio Spurs at halftime, 56-52, on Friday at AT&T Center.", "Spurs guard Tony Parker has signed a multiyear extension, preserving San Antonio's Big Three at least through next season." ]

[ "Near the end of Louder than Bombs, Norwegian writer-director Joachim Trier's first English-language film, a narrator arrives to inform us that one of the characters will remember that particular moment years later. The intrusion is unexpected, but perhaps less so for people who've seen Trier's 2006 debut, Reprise. That playfully serious movie was about the making of a writer's consciousness, so its literary flourishes were apt. In their clever but ultimately disappointing latest film, Trier and regular co-writer Eskil Vogt turn their novelistic style to the saga of a war photographer and her family. Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert) is dead when the story begins, but she appears in flashbacks and dream sequences. Left behind is Gene (Gabriel Byrne), who was once an actor but became a high-school teacher in a New York suburb so the couple's two sons would have one parent with a normal life. Gene's older son, Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) is now a college professor with a wife and a brand new baby (named, of course, Isabelle). His younger brother, Conrad (Devin Druid), is a sullen teenager who initially seems the more troubled of the two. That Dad teaches at the school Conrad attends is not making things easier. An exhibition of Isabelle's photographs is planned, and Jonah devotes himself to it, apparently as a way of escaping his wife and daughter. With the show comes a proposed article by one of Isabelle's former colleagues (David Strathairn). He may reveal things about the late photog that Gene and Jonah would prefer stay private — and that Conrad doesn't even know. But dad and big brother's attempts to shield the boy just make him more resentful. This is a fairly conventional domestic melodrama, twisted interestingly if not always profoundly with tricky storytelling. Handheld camera creates intimacy and off-kilter motion, and reflections in windows and mirrors are both visual and psychological motifs. The family members' glimpses of each other each are fragmented, detached, and sometimes accidental. Trier rhymes scenes to show how different characters deceive each other the same way, and sometimes with the same words. Most elaborately, he twice stages a sequence in which Gene follows Conrad on his after-school rounds. The first time, we see the events from the father's viewpoint, and the son seems unaware that he's under observation. Then we see that Conrad knew he was being watched, and tried to script his movements to suit Gene's preconceptions. Sometimes, parent and child meet in an alternate universe. Conrad escapes into video games, so Gene adopts a game avatar and meets his son online. (The outcome is darkly comic.) For his computer ploy, Conrad has unearthed an old clip of his dad in a movie — it's a scene from a 1987 comedy, Hello Again, in which Byrne plays against Shelley Long — that he proudly shows to an incredulous Jonah. The movie's title is likely from an album by the Smiths, one of several alt-rock acts referenced in Trier and Vogt's work. (In the Vogt-directed Blind, two characters are linked by a Morrissey album.) But the phrase comes from Elizabeth Smart, who's among Morrissey's many female literary inspirations. That's ironic, because women are at best ghostly presences in Louder Than Bombs. Isabelle is actually dead, and the other female characters — Gene's secret lover, Conrad's unrequited crush, and both Jonah's wife and his ex-girlfriend — scarcely exist. They're muses, not people, which may be why one of the film's final hints is that Conrad — like Reprise's protagonists — will grow up to be an autobiographical writer. Even when making a family drama, Trier's essential subject is the self-absorption of the creative male." ]

[ "The world is ending, billions will die, and hell is, literally, coming to Long Island. But the rebooted Left Behind doesn't want to alarm you. Fourteen years ago, as a new millennium's arrival failed to extinguish our doggedly persistent universe, the first Left Behind movie introduced a slithery Antichrist — a U.N. official, of course — and the prospect of global war centered on Jerusalem. Just last month, The Remaining treated the fundamentalist-Christian notion of \"the rapture\" as a horror movie, littered with the corpses of born-againers whose souls had been called to heaven. The second attempt to create a successful movie franchise from the 16 best-selling Left Behind novels takes a gentler approach. The departed abandon only their clothing, not their carcasses. And no demons are glimpsed in a tale that focuses tightly on the family of airline pilot Ray Steele (Nicolas Cage). As Ray tries to land a disabled jetliner whose co-pilot is now chilling with the man upstairs, his challenges derive less from the Bible (1 Thessalonians 4:17, in particular) than from such moldy disaster flicks as 1969's Airport. For those who missed this particular end of the world the last time it didn't happen, Left Behind is based on a series of sectarian thrillers by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. Adapting the books to the screen began in 2000, but the movies didn't click even as straight-to-church-auditorium fare, and stopped at three. The producers of the latest round of adaptations have also promised three, not a full 13. The revamped but still clunky saga begins as Ray prepares to fly from JFK to London by removing his wedding ring. He's estranged from his wife (Lea Thompson) since she became a rapture-ready Christian, and is hoping to spend some time with a sexy flight attendant once they land. This carnal design has so warped his judgment that he has decided to skip a family reunion with daughter Chloe (Cassie Thomson), who has returned from college just to see him. Chloe visits her dad briefly at the airport, and while there meets famed daredevil journalist Buck Williams (Chad Michael Murray), who will also be on that flight to London. Then she takes her little brother to the mall, where break dancers bust some moves that are as fluid as the dialogue is stiff. This protracted setup moves about as briskly as the first three hours of Boyhood. Finally, the righteous vanish and the rest are left to ponder their disappearance. Chloe searches for her sibling and mom, both of whom are no longer in this world; her dad flies the damaged plane while piecing together the religious significance of what just happened. In first class, Williams deals with unruly fellow travelers selected for their comic-relief value. Among the passengers is a pistol-packing sports-star spouse played by American Idol champ Jordin Sparks, who sings the end-credits ditty, \"I Wish We'd All Been Ready.\" Viewers will wish that director Vic Armstrong and scripters Paul Lalonde and John Patus had been ready, too. The movie climaxes with Ray's attempt to land the plane, an utterly nontheological struggle. This section of the movie is adequately staged, if not exactly surprising. Its emphasis on real-world rather than supernatural threats is shrewd, but sooner or later the new Left Behind series will have to focus on its source's real agenda. At that point, the potential audience will evaporate faster than Chloe's kid brother.", "Attorney General Eric Holder will be going to Ferguson, Mo., on Wednesday to meet with federal agents and community leaders there, President Obama said in a news conference Monday. The Justice Department is conducting its own investigation into the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen who was shot by a police officer and whose death has sparked a week of protests. That will be a challenge, but FBI agents have already been on the ground, canvassing the neighborhood for information. In a statement Monday afternoon, Holder asked for patience during the investigation. He added: \"The selective release of sensitive information that we have seen in this case so far is troubling to me. No matter how others pursue their own separate inquiries, the Justice Department is resolved to preserve the integrity of its investigation. This is a critical step in restoring trust between law enforcement and the community, not just in Ferguson, but beyond.\" Update at 12:15 a.m. ET Tuesday: Tear gas made another appearance in Ferguson on Monday night, according to St. Louis Post Dispatch reporters: Protests escalated again late Monday night as police fired tear gas at protesters who defied police by refusing orders to disperse, instead gathering in groups near the QuikTrip and other Ferguson spots. Police fired at least three tear gas volleys near the QuikTrip as emergency vehicles sped to the scene. Police also used tear gas to break up protesters near West Florissant and Northwoods Estates. NPR's Gene Demby reported seeing flash bombs, and that some protesters were targeting an MSNBC anchor. Update at 11 p.m. ET — Photographer Released; Protests Intensify; Celebrity Sighting Getty Images and family members have confirmed that photographer Scott Olson has been released from jail after being arrested earlier in the evening. His son said via Twitter that Olson wasn't calling it a day yet. NPR reporter Elise Hu says that all Ferguson schools will be closed through the end of the week, and that armored National Guard Humvees have begun moving toward the protests. Authorities are requiring protesters to keep moving and not maintain a demonstration in any single place, and have arrested two men for failing to disperse, The Associated Press reports. St. Louis-based rapper Nelly is also on the scene, she reports. Update at 9 p.m. ET. — Other Ferguson News To Read --In addition to the remarks noted above, President Obama responded to a question about a program that has helped local law enforcement buy military-style equipment. The New York Times and Newsweek have both written overviews of the initiative. \"It's probably useful for us to review how the funding has gone, how local law enforcement has used grant dollars, to make sure that what they're purchasing is stuff that they actually need,\" Obama said Monday. --There are reports of more arrests, including Getty photographer Scott Olson (some of whose photographs are in our slideshow above). Getty's vice president of news responded to Olson's arrest in a statement on its website, which said in part: \"We strongly object to his arrest and are committed to ensuring he is able to resume his important work of capturing some of the most iconic images of this news story.\" --There's also been buzz about this new Pew research showing \"stark racial divisions in reactions to Ferguson\" police shooting and protests. A highlight: \"Blacks are about twice as likely as whites to say that the shooting of Michael Brown 'raises important issues about race that need to be discussed.' \" --For more real-time updates, Poynter's Kristen Hare has a Twitter list of St. Louis journalists covering the situation. Updated at 7:10 p.m. ET — Obama Press Conference Asked if he could be doing more himself — including going to the St. Louis suburb — Obama said he did not want to appear to be tipping the scale of justice one way or the other. \"I have to be very careful about not prejudging these events before investigations are completed,\" he said. Obama also discussed his efforts to work with communities \"that feel left behind,\" including the My Brother's Keeper initiative. \"Part of the ongoing challenge of perfecting our union has involved dealing with communities that feel left behind, who as a consequence of tragic histories often find themselves isolated, often find themselves without hope, without economic prospects,\" the president said. \"Part of my job that I can do, I think without any potential conflict, is to get at those root causes.\" Obama noted that getting to those roots has been a challenge for centuries, but in the short term, he said he wanted to ensure that justice was carried out fairly in Ferguson. \"It's clear that the vast majority of people are peacefully protesting,\" he said. \"What's also clear is that a small minority of people are not.\" But he said there is \"no excuse for excessive force by police\" or action that denies people's right to freedom of speech or assembly. In regards to Gov." ]

[ "Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie marked the anniversary of a Palestinian uprising against Israel on Tuesday by calling on both sides to rethink tactics that have brought four years of bloodshed." ]

[ "Ministers are urged to rethink plans for Manchester, not Blackpool, to get the new super-casino.", "Palestinians may well be glad to see the back of George W. Bush at next month's presidential elections but are sceptical that John Kerry will execute a major rethink in US policy on the Middle East conflict.", "Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas Gandhi who won India&#39;s freedom through his non-violence struggle, urges Palestinians to adopt the same tactic.", "· East Europeans 'pose integration challenge'· Councils urged to rethink strategies on diversity", "Security gurus urge the industry to rethink the way it classifies malicious software.", "More than 160 MPs sign Commons motions urging ministers to rethink a decision to stagger the police pay award.", "A group of Palestinian politicians and intellectuals urges officials not to meet UK PM Tony Blair during an expected trip to the region.", "BESLAN, Russia - Russian President Vladimir Putin called Saturday for a radical rethink of security forces' tactics against terror after the seizure of a school by Chechen militants ended in chaos and bloodshed.", "MPs urge a rethink of the government's refusal to split the assessment of special needs from its funding.", "King Abdullah of Jordan urged the United States on Wednesday to exert new leadership in the Middle East and said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still the core problem.", "Israeli PM Ariel Sharon repeats threats to expel the Palestinian leader from Palestinian territories.", "Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States criticized Washington on Wednesday for its \"rhetoric and bombast\" in dealing with Arab countries and urged greater efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.", "Qatar will pay the salaries of 40,000 Palestinian education workers for several months, says the Palestinian PM.", "President George W. Bush on Thursday acknowledged the need for \"concerted efforts\" to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, after a panel on the Iraq war urged revived U.S. diplomacy to defuse broader regional tensions.", "Hungary's opposition urges mass protests outside parliament as the embattled PM faces a confidence vote.", "· Ofcom urges rethink of broadcaster's remit · Cash help needed to plug £100m digital black hole", "Four House Republicans on Wednesday urged the Bush administration to rethink its policy on opium production in Afghanistan, saying more needs to be done to counter the growing threat of narco-terrorism.", "Why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be a priority for the next administration", "The Saudi initiative calls for regional dialogue over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.", "Blairites are urged to bury the hatchet with Gordon Brown by a prominent supporter of the former PM.", "Blairite Rhondda MP Chris Bryant is named as a co-ordinator of a letter to the PM urging him to quit.", "Israelis and Palestinians are to discuss core issues in the conflict on Monday, the Palestinian leader says.", "Israel's PM says anger is understandable amid Palestinian rocket attacks, but it is not a plan of action.", "Israeli PM Ariel Sharon reportedly decides to resume diplomatic contacts with the Palestinians.", "· Appeal judge urges all UK residents to be sampled· No plans to widen records, says PM's spokesman", "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not be the only issue on his visit to Israel.", "PM urged to challenge visiting king on regime's links to extremist literature distributed in British mosques.", "British Prime Minister Tony Blair blasted his fellow European politicians for their anti-American &quot;madness&quot; in dangerous times as he urged a complete strategy rethink to defeat extremism.", "Interim Iraqi PM Iyad Allawi urges what he calls 'spectator' countries to help rebuild Iraq.", "Jordan's king urges Iraqis to keep their country united, ahead of talks with President Bush and the Iraqi PM.", "Israeli PM Ariel Sharon reportedly decides to lift a ban on diplomatic contact with the Palestinians.", "US Democrats urge the Bush administration to release in full a report linking the Iraq conflict and global terrorism." ]